Quote

I think that it's more important for an economist to be wise and sophisticated in scientific method than it is for a physicist because with controlled laboratory experiments possible, they practically guide you; you couldn't go astray. Whereas in economics, by dogma and misunderstanding, you can go very sadly astray.

The track record of economists in predicting events is monstrously bad. It is beyond simplification; it is like medieval medicine.

People today don't become economists to make the world a better place.

I've felt for some time that economics needs to be taught differently by economists who actually have had experience making a payroll or investing on Wall Street. When economics is taught by pure academics, watch out.

Years ago, I noticed one thing about economics, and that is that economists didn't get anything right.

Fifty years ago, historians advised politicians and policy-makers. They helped chart the future of nations by helping leaders learn from past mistakes in history. But then something changed, and we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic.

Economists create their own worlds. We're like little gods with our artificial economics, wanting to see what happens.

The quarrel of the sociologists with the historians is that the latter have learned so much about how to do it that they have forgotten what to do. They have become so skilled in finding facts that they have no use for the truths that would make the facts worth finding.

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.

Economists want their discipline to be a science, and they have nailed down a few precepts, but many of their debates are still clouded by ideology.