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Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.

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
Human
Humans
Figment
Figments
Equilibrium
Imagination

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The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market... the higher the black market price.
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Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself.
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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.
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Humble, honest, ignorance is one of the finest flowers of the human spirit
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The organization of science into disciplines sets up a series of ghettos with remarkable distances of artificial social space between them.
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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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Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
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All knowledge is gained through an orderly loss of information.
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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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[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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[In science any model depends on a pre-chosen taxonomy] a set of classifications into which we divide the enormous complexity of the real world... Land, labor, and capital are extremely heterogeneous aggregates, not much better than earth, air, fire, and water.
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[The historical] development in the international system may almost be defined as the process by which we pass from stable war to stable peace.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Justification, in terms of the broadening of freedom, for any particular form of institution of property must be argued in terms of whether the losses caused by the restrictions imposed are greater or less than the gains derived from the elimination of costly conflict.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The proposition that the meek (that is the adaptable and serviceable), inherit the earth is not merely a wishful sentiment of religion, but an iron law of evolution.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Where there is hypocrisy, there is hope.
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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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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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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In any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting.
Kenneth E. Boulding