Gunnar Myrdal quotes

Gunnar Myrdal was a Swedish economist and sociologist, renowned for his work on economic theory and social issues. His influential research examined the relationships between economics, politics, and society, and had a profound impact on social policy. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to the field. Here are 36 of his quotes:

Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.

Gunnar Myrdal

America has had gifted conservative statesmen and national leaders. But with few exceptions, only the liberals have gone down in history as national heroes.

Gunnar Myrdal

Language, as we know, is full of illogicalities.

Gunnar Myrdal

The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes. As in the case of the Negro, women themselves have often been brought to believe in their inferiority of endowment.

Gunnar Myrdal

Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be found to press for ever more state intervention in practically all fields.

Gunnar Myrdal

In this sense the Negro problem is not only America's greatest failure but also America's incomparably great opportunity for the future. If America should follow its own deepest convictions, its well-being at home would be increased directly. At the same time America's prestige and power abroad would rise immensely.

Gunnar Myrdal

The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well-off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery almost without noticing them.

Gunnar Myrdal

All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.

Gunnar Myrdal

In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.

Gunnar Myrdal

It is good proof of Keynes' intuitive genius that he reaches practical results that in many respects are very much superior to his deficient statements of certain theoretical problems.

Gunnar Myrdal

Some of these quantities refer directly to a point of time. That is true of "capital value" as also of such quantities as demand and supply prices. Other terms – as e. g. "income", "revenue", "return", "expenses", "savings", "investments" – imply, however, a time period for which they are reckoned. But in order to be unambiguous they must also refer to a point of time at which they are calculated.

Gunnar Myrdal

An important distinction exists between prospective and retrospective methods of calculating economic quantities such as incomes, savings, and investments; and... a corresponding distinction of great theoretical importance must be drawn between two alternative methods of defining these quantities. Quantities defined in terms of measurements made at the end of the period in question are referred to as ex post; quantities defined in terms of action planned at the beginning of the period in question are referred to as ex ante.

Gunnar Myrdal

The breakdown of discrimination in one part of the labor market facilitates a similar change in all other parts of it. The vicious circle can be reversed.

Gunnar Myrdal

A criticism of Keynes and Hayek would have to begin by pointing out the fact that in their theoretical systems there is no place for the uncertainty factor and anticipations.

Gunnar Myrdal

The only possible way of decreasing Negro population is by means of controlling fertility.

Gunnar Myrdal

Education means an assimilation of white American culture. It decreases the dissimilarity of the Negroes from other Americans.

Gunnar Myrdal

Of all the calamities that have struck the rural Negro people in the South in recent decades-soil erosion, the infiltration of white tenants into plantation areas, the ravages of the boll weevil, the southwestern shift in cotton cultivation-none has had such grave consequences, or threatens to have such lasting effect, as the combination of world agricultural trends and federal agricultural policies initiated during the thirties.

Gunnar Myrdal

White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in its turn, gives support to white prejudice. White prejudice and Negro standards thus mutually ‘cause' each other.

Gunnar Myrdal

There is in fact no contradiction at all between the statement of an exact bookkeeping balance ex post and the obvious inference that in a situation when saving is increasing without a corresponding increase of investment, or perhaps with an adverse movement in investment, there must be a tendency ex ante to a disparity.

Gunnar Myrdal

For these anticipations determine the behaviour of the economic subjects and consequently those changes in the whole price system which during a period actually occur as a result of the actions of individuals.

Gunnar Myrdal

The further away a scholarly opinion is from direct observation and the more abstract and ‘theoretical' it is, the more defenseless it becomes against insidious opportunist errors of judgment. In economics, model thinking in particular creates scope for systematic biases... But of course all social studies must nevertheless aim at generalization. It is thus important to be able to think concretely at the same time, as I learnt from Gustav Cassel.

Gunnar Myrdal

The bright side is that the conquering of color caste in America is America's own innermost desire. This nation early laid down as the moral basis for its existence the principles of equality and liberty. However much Americans have dodged this conviction, they have refused to adjust their laws to their own license. Today, more than ever, they refuse to discuss systematizing their caste order to mutual advantage, apparently because they most seriously mean that caste is wrong and should not be given recognition. They stand warm heartedly against oppression in all the world. When they are reluctantly forced into war, they are compelled to justify their participation to their own conscience by insisting that they are fighting against aggression and for liberty and equality.

Gunnar Myrdal