Quote

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

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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
Rather
Profit
Maximization
Hope
Gains
Determining
Force
Survival
Perceptions
Fear
Perception
Threats
May
Threat
Profits
Important
Limits
Gain
Much
Behavior
Potential
Really
Loss
Driving

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Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.
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Communication can only take place among equals.
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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.
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[The consumer is] the supreme mover of economic order... for whom all goods are made and towards whom all economic activity is directed.
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Economists and technologists bring the bits, but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the wits.
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Economists are like computers. They need to have facts punched into them.
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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 economy of the future might be called the spaceman economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything.
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If a totally new image is to come into being however, there must be sensitivity to internal messages, the image itself must be sensitive to change, must be unstable, and it must include a value image which places high value on trials, experiments, and the trying of new things.
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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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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.
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If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.
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In any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting.
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Humble, honest, ignorance is one of the finest flowers of the human spirit
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The tourist business is a trap, it is a tained honey Man clearly should have stayed in bed, and not invented money.
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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.
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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.
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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? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?
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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.
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