Quote

[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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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
Degrees
Sciences
Absolutely
Purely
Trackless
Often
Contribute
Usefully
Lost
Occasionally
Looseness
Part
Employed
Varying
Indispensable
Equilibrium
Systems
Dynamic
Notion
Economist

More quotes by Kenneth E. Boulding

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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.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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We never like to admit to ourselves that we have made a mistake. Organizational structures tend to accentuate this source of failure of information.
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.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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With laissez-faire and price atomic, ecology's uneconomic, But with another kind of logic economy's unecologic.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The World is a very complex system. It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there?
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market... the higher the black market price.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Knowledge exists in minds, not in books. Before what has been found can be used by practitioners, someone must organize it, integrate it, extract the message.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The future is bound to surprise us, but we don't have to be dumbfounded.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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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.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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There is a quiet, open place in the depths of the mind, to which we can go many times in the day and lift up our soul in praise, thankfulness and conscious unity. With practise this God-ward turn of the mind becomes an almost constant direction, underlying all our other activities.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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[There will be movement toward] behavioral economics... [which] involves study of those aspects of men's images, or cognitive and affective structures that are more relevant to economic decisions.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Communication can only take place among equals.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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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
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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All knowledge is gained through an orderly loss of information.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior.
Kenneth E. Boulding