One of the pleasing things about science is that we do all climb towards the heavens on the shoulders of our predecessors. Economics, like physics, has its heroes, and the letter ‘H’ that I used in my mathematical equations was not there to honor Sir William Hamilton, but rather Harold Hotelling. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
What is it that the scientist finds useful in being able to relate a positive description of behavior to the solution of a maximizing problem? That is what a good deal of my own early work was about. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
In the jargon of American vaudeville, Professors Frisch and Tinbergen are a ‘hard act to follow.’ But then, all my life, I have been following such great scholars and policy advisors as these. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
Self-deception ultimately explains Japan’s plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest – and not merely a response to U.S. criticism. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
It is not easy to get rich in Las Vegas, at Churchill Downs, or at the local Merrill Lynch office. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
I came to the University of Chicago on the morning of January 2, 1932. I wasn’t yet a graduate of high school for another few months. And that was about the low point of the Herbert Hoover/Andrew Mellon phase after October of 1929. That’s quite a number of years to have inaction. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
In 1936, money had no important role. Interest rates were one-eighth of one-eighth of one per cent. I did some research, and I found that the interest on one million dollars of ninety-day Treasuries was $37. People didn’t even bother to collect it. The Fed wasn’t important. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
I have not been able in one lecture even to scratch the surface of the role of maximum principles in analytic economics. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
Things swept so badly that I had distrust – after 1967, let’s say – of American Keynesianism. For better or worse, U.S. Keynesianism was so far ahead of where it started. I am a cafeteria Keynesian. Paul Samuelson Read Quote
