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A depression is a situation of self-fulfilling pessimism.

Joan Robinson

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Joan Robinson
Age: 79 †
Born: 1903
Born: October 31
Died: 1983
Died: August 5
Economist
University Teacher
Camberley
Surrey
Joan Violet Robinson
Joan Violet Maurice
Depression
Economics
Situation
Self
Pessimism
Fulfilling

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Unemployment is a reproach to a democratic government.
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It's a terrible thing to be a worker exploited in the capitalist system. The only worse thing is to be a worker unable to find anyone to exploit you.
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There is an unearthly, mystical element in Friedman's thought. The mere existence of a stock of money somehow promotes expenditure. But insofar as he offers an intelligible theory, it is made up of elements borrowed from Keynes.
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It is much easier to organize control over one industry serving many markets than over one market served by the products of several industries.
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The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
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If a rise in wages does not raise prices, a fall will not reduce them.
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Income from property is not the reward of waiting, it is the reward of employing a good stockbroker.
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The first essential for economists ... is to ... combat, not foster, the ideology which pretends that values which can be measured in terms of money are the only ones that ought to count.
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Marxism is the opium of the Marxists.
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Ideology is like breath: you never smell your own.
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owning capital is not a productive activity.
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In all the talk in the Principles (as opposed to the formal analysis) it is not the saving of rentiers but the energy of entrepreneurs which governs accumulation.
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There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.
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The orthodox doctrines of economics which were dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had a clear message. They supported laisser faire, free trade, the gold standard, and the universally advantageous effects of the pursuit of profit by competitive private enterprise.
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Unequal distribution of income is an excessively uneconomic method of getting the necessary saving done.
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The point of studying economics is so as not to be fooled by economists.
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Economic theorists should not make such a production about taking a rabbit out of a hat after having put the rabbit into the hat in full view of the audience.
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The very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism. ... It [was] developed ... in the hope of throwing light upon questions of policy. But policy means nothing unless there is an authority to carry it out, and authorities are national.
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An economy may be in equilibrium from a short-period point of view and yet contain within itself incompatibilities that are soon going to knock it out of equilibrium.
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I do not regard the Keynesian revolution as a great intellectual triumph. On the contrary, it was a tragedy because it came so late. Hitler had already found out how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occured.
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