George Stigler Quotes

A populist is someone who sees politics from an economic perspective rather than an ideological perspective. I’m a populist. The only thing that really matters is who is gets screwed and who is doing the screwing.

Whoever controls the question determines the answer.

What is called sound economics is very often what mirrors the needs of the respectably affluent.

The economy controls the politicians far more than the politicians control the economy.

Capitalism is so successful economically that it creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

A conservative is someone who demands a square deal for the rich.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experience. No one can eliminate prejudices—just recognize them.

The unfettered free market has been the most radically disruptive force in American life in the last generation.

We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.

An economist always shows two sides to the same coin and a politician pretends that the coin has just one side.

Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question.

Fundamentally all social and political questions are economic.

... wholly in the interest of the creditor classes, the banking fraternity, and the commercial world, without proper provision for the debtor classes and those who toil, produce and sustain the country.

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money – and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.

Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history.

If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

When the economy is bad, the party in power is blamed. When the economy is good, people look at other issues.

I think that it is morally wrong to be an economic determinist.

In prosperous times the mercantile classes often realize fortunes, which go far towards securing them against the future; but unfortunately the working classes, though they share in the general prosperity, do not share in it so largely as in the general adversity.

The possession of wealth confers honor; it is an invidious distinction.

Remember, we see the world not as it is but as we are. Most of us see through the eyes of our fears and our limiting beliefs and our false assumptions.

Some people have facts; these can be proven. Some people have theories; these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it.

High levels of economic inequality lead to imbalances in political power, as those at the top use their economic weight to shape our politics in ways that give them more economic power.

People are going to assume whatever they want to assume.