Paul Samuelson Quotes

Good questions outrank easy answers.

I don't care who writes a nation's laws - or crafts its advanced treaties - if I can write its economics textbooks.

The stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions.

Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.

Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much.

There is something in people; you might even call it a little bit of a gambling instinct… I tell people investing should be dull. It shouldn't be exciting. Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.

Macroeconomics, even with all of our computers and with all of our information - is not an exact science and is incapable of being an exact science.

Economics never was a dismal science. It should be a realistic science.

The growth of a nation's productive potential is the central factor in determining its growth in real wages and living standards.... high rates of investment and saving usually have a big payoff in promoting economic growth.

Economists have much to be humble about.

Profits are the lifeblood of the economic system, the magic elixir upon which progress and all good things depend ultimately. But one man's lifeblood is another man's cancer.

Thousands of important and intelligent men have never been able to grasp the principle of comparative advantage or believe it even after it was explained to them

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles.

Reasonable men are not reasonable when you're in the bubbles which have characterized capitalism since the beginning of time.

Forsake search for needles that are so very small in haystacks that are so very large.

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.

A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived.

To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties.

We're a me-me-me generation. We're borrowing the savings of every nation in the world. We're ... piling up a big tab. Now, I may think we're too big to have a run on us. You may think that. But it's possible that God does not.

You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life.

In every mutual fund prospectus, in every sales promotional folder, and in every mutual fund advertisement (albeit in print almost too small to read), the following warning appears: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

Even fans of actively managed funds often concede that most other investors would be better off in index funds. But buoyed by abundant self-confidence, these folks aren't about to give up on actively managed funds themselves. A tad delusional? I think so. Picking the best-performing funds is 'like trying to predict the dice before you roll them down the craps table,' says an investment adviser in Boca Raton, FL. 'I can't do it. The public can't do it.'

When the economy was going up, [Milton Friedman and I] both gave the same advice, and when the economy was going down, we gave the same advice. But in between he didn't change his advice at all.

Investing is like waiting for paint dry and grass grow so. If you like fun, let handle 800 USD and headed to Las Vegas