Paul Samuelson Quotes

Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

I'm happy to say I am a Harrison-Kreps-Keynesian.

With the passing of Milton Friedman on November 16, 2006, we lost one of the great champions of free markets.

I'm a big fan of economist Milton Freidman.

I am not a monetarist, and I am not a Keynesian. On certain points I agree with each.

The Chicago Economics Department was in intellectual ferment, although the central issues of the 1930's were very different from those in later times. I had never before encountered minds of that quality at close quarters and they influenced me strongly.

My decision to leave applied mathematics for economics was in part tied to the widely-held popular belief in the 1960s that macroeconomics had made fundamental inroads into controlling business cycles and stopping dysfunctional unemployment and inflation.

Until Keynes, politicians had not needed economists for help in running the country any more than they had needed astronomers. But Keynes made them indispensible.

The Keynesian idea is once again accepted that fiscal policy and deficit spending has a major role to play in guiding a market economy. I wish Friedman were still alive so he could witness how his extremism led to the defeat of his own ideas.

There's nothing in Keynesian economics that would allow you to solve stagflation. But there's nothing in neoclassical economics that would allow you to solve stagflation, either.

The human capital of most macroeconomists, heavily invested in demand management, was wiped out by the policy failures of the 1970s.

Microeconomics is about money you don't have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.

Economics departments are dominated by Marxism, which is taken straight or on the rocks, in the form of Keynesianism.

It is no longer a matter of serious controversy whether the government should play a positive role in helping to maintain a high level of economic activity. What we debate nowadays is not the need for controlling business cycles, but rather the nature of governmental action, its timing and its extent.

Monetary policy and fiscal policy are inseparable.

Voodoo economics

I reject the advice of those who think the only way to fight inflation is to throw millions of people out of work .... I guarantee you that I will not fight inflation with your jobs.

Is supply-side economics finished? Only in the sense that General George S. Patton's army was finished in Germany in May, 1945.

We now have the worst of both worlds – not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other side, but both of them together. We have sort of “stagflation” situation.

From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarcely be folly in that of a great kingdom.

Politicians always seek a pain-free solution to economic problems, and the economists keep reminding us that there is no such thing.

Very few people in Congress know very much about economics.

If the United States does well [economically], then the whole world does well.

What a surprise. Economists disagree.