Charles E. Wilson Quotes

I think that we live in a highly specialized, technologically advanced society. Highly developed societies tend to have very remote understandings about what underlies our prosperity.

A successful society is characterized by a rising living standard for its population, increasing investment in factories and basic infrastructure, and the generation of additional surplus, which is invested in generating new discoveries in science and technology.

I'm impressed by the economic development of Korea. And women scientists played, without doubt, an important role in it.

Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.

To live well in the second half of the 1990s and into the 21st Century, Australians have to produce and trade better than we have in the past….to improve workers' living standards and generate more jobs, we need to make major changes in the way our companies are managed and our factories produce wealth

India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people's century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble.

We adapt to technological progress by raising our minimum standards of living and working to stay above this rising threshold.

Fiscal decentralisation does not lead to higher economic growth because economic growth is much more driven by factors other than taxes and spending, e.g. increases in technological progress and improved human capital.

The industrial revolution in the new century is, in essence, a scientific and technological revolution, and breaking through the cutting edge is a shortcut to the building of an economic giant.

While China succeeded in transferring nearly 150 million people from agriculture to manufacturing, we could not do so, due to lack of skilled manpower.

In this time of budget cuts, we cannot forget that basic science is a building block for scientific innovation and economic growth in the information age.

Learning from the American experience, governments around the world have developed national innovation policies and programs to accelerate their economic prosperity and to help their citizens and companies compete globally.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

Mass prosperity came with the mass innovation that sprung up in 1815 in Britain, soon after in America, and later in Germany and France: It brought sustained growth to these nations - also to nations with entrepreneurs willing and able to copy the innovations.

You can't be a first-world economy in the 21st century if you haven't laid the groundwork to seize the opportunities.

There is no better form of trade a developing nation can engage in than to sell services provided by an educated population.

We all know that China is industrializing at a growth rate of 8 to 10 percent per year. China is on track to pass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 20 to 25 years, and China is determined to give its people a chance at this high standard of living that we enjoy.

Leaders in China and India realize that science and technology lead to success and wealth. But many countries in the West graduate students into the unemployment line by teaching skills that were necessary to live in 1950.

Today, being the biggest developing countries in the world, China and India are both committed to developing their economy and raising their people's living standards.

The only way you get economic progress, real standards of living moving higher, is to have the savings of the society continuously invested in the cutting-edge technologies. And those technologies which are obsolescent get dropped out.

As an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy needs to go beyond sentiment and history.

We are not overpopulated in an absolute sense; we've got the technology for 10 billion, probably 15 billion people, to live on this planet and live good lives. What we haven't done is developed our technology.

If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth, it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

We're not necessarily the ski boat, we're the skier. There are countries like Japan and Korea and others who are the ski boat at this point, but we're getting pulled right behind them.

At the same time, we are keenly aware that China is still the largest developing country in the world and we need to make long and hard efforts if we are to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and basically achieve modernization.