Quotes About Economics

Do you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don't, and anyone who says they do is full of shit.

only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.

The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. "Fear," he used to say, "fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.

The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton.

How many children are really wanted? The fact that the woman would rather have it once it's there is a different matter, an automatic reaction of the instincts, she forgets she tried to avoid it and added to this is the feeling of power over the man, motherhood as an economic weapon in the hands of the woman.

The fact is, nobody has the faintest idea of what is going to happen next year, next week, or even tomorrow. If you hope to get anywhere as a speculator, you must get out of the habit of listening to forecasts. It is of the utmost importance that you never take economists, market advisers, or other financial oracles seriously.

Why do we go on listening to economic prophets when they plainly know no more about the future than you or I?

Economists, market advisers, political oracles, and clairvoyants all know this basic rule by heart: if you can't forecast right, forecast often.

To make war you need three things: one, money; two, money; and three, money.

The structure of marriage in a patriarchal society is based on a system of exchange, one in which men are traditionally taught to provide economically for women and children in exchange for sexual, housekeeping, and nurturing services.

Capitalism is a system that works extremely well for someone who is highly motivated and very energetic, but it is not a great system for someone who is not interested in working hard or for someone who feels no need to contribute to the economic well-being of their community.

Libertarians or individualists believed people should be free to do whatever they wanted with their money. But in reality, people had never been free to do whatever they wanted with their money. There were laws, regulations, criminal statutes.

Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth. Capitalism is stymied, courting long-term disaster.

the readers to buy their stocks as they bought their groceries, not as they bought their perfume

personas que tienen unos ingresos fijos en términos monetarios sufrirán cuando el coste de la vida aumente

Lucent's stock, at $51.062 on June 30, 2000, finished 2002 at $1.26—a loss of nearly $190 billion in market value in two-and-a-half years.

I quickly convinced myself that the true key to material happiness lay in a modest standard of living which could be achieved with little difficulty under almost all economic conditions"—the margin-of-safety idea applied to personal finance.21

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return."1 Note that investing, according to Graham, consists equally of three elements:

Investment must always consider the price as well as the quality of the security.

That's why inflation is so easy to overlook—and why it's so important to measure your investing success not just by what you make, but by how much you keep after inflation.

knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

what Graham called "quotational" values

If you receive a 2% raise in a year when inflation runs at 4%, you will almost certainly feel better than you will if you take a 2% pay cut during a year when inflation is zero. Yet both changes in your salary leave you in a virtually identical position—2% worse off after inflation.

If you receive a 2% raise in a year when inflation runs at 4%, you will almost certainly feel better than you will if you take a 2% pay cut during a year when inflation is zero. Yet both changes in your salary leave you in a virtually identical position—2% worse off after inflation. So long as the nominal (or absolute) change is positive, we view it as a good thing—even if the real (or after-inflation) result is negative.