My Economics Diary

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.

― John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, p. 383 (1936)

The market for ideas was often more important than the market for goods.

― Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (2016)

An invention with no possibility of commercial application does not by itself produce an economic outcome.

― Tevfik Güran, History of Economics, p. 166 (2016)

In terms of intellectual property, knowledge has a market, a supply and demand, and a price.

― Alvin Ward Gouldner, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (1979)

It is quite wrong to try founding a theory on observable magnitudes alone. In reality the very opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe.

― Albert Einstein, quoted in Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations, p. 63 (1971)