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Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.

Kenneth E. Boulding

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Kenneth E. Boulding
Age: 83 †
Born: 1910
Born: January 18
Died: 1993
Died: March 18
Author
Economist
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
City of Liverpool
Kenneth Ewart Boulding
Even
Addiction
Economics
Resources
Incurably
Cost
Exhaustion
Growth
Oriented
Environment
Addicted
Growing
Richer
Everybody
Pollution

More quotes by Kenneth E. Boulding

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Political conflict rests to a very large extent on a universal ignorance of consequences, as the people who are benefited by any particular act or policy are rarely those who struggled for it, and the people who are injured are rarely those who opposed it.
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[The integrative system] deals with such matters as respect, legitimacy, community, friendship, affection, love, and of course their opposites, across a broad scale of human relationships and interactions.
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The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are about the future. It is the great task of human knowledge to bridge this gap and to find those patterns in the past which can be projected into the future as realistic images.
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Conflict may be defined as a situation of competition in which the parties are aware of the incompatibility of potential future positions, and in which each party wishes to occupy a position that is incompatible with the wishes of the other.
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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.
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The concept of a value-free science is absurd.
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Communication can only take place among equals.
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The discounting presumably is to be done for each period of time at that rate of interest which represents the alternative cost of employing capital in the occupation in question that is, at the rate which the entrepreneur could obtain in other investments
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[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there?
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Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man?
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Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong, Yet hate is short, and love is very long.
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[The notion of equilibrium] is a notion which can be employed usefully in varying degrees of looseness. It is an absolutely indispensable part of the toolbag of the economist and one which he can often contribute usefully to other sciences which are occasionally apt to get lost in the trackless exfoliations of purely dynamic systems.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Economists and technologists bring the bits, but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the wits.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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If the society toward which we are developing is not to be a nightmare of exhaustion, we must use the interlude of the present era to develop a new technology which is based on a circular flow of materials such that the only sources of man's provisions will be his own waste products.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Perhaps the most difficult ethical problem of the scientific community arises not so much from conflict with other subcultures as from its own success. Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.
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[The loss-of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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One advantage of exhibiting a hierarchy of systems in this way is that it gives us some idea of the present gaps in both theoretical and empirical knowledge. Adequate theoretical models extend up to about the fourth level, and not much beyond. Empirical knowledge is deficient at practically all levels.
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The trouble with taxonomic boxes is... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Where there is hypocrisy, there is hope.
Kenneth E. Boulding