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

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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.
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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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Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself.
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Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.
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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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[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.
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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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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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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.
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The trouble with taxonomic boxes is... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside.
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Humble, honest, ignorance is one of the finest flowers of the human spirit
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Physicists only talk to physicists, economists to economists-worse still, nuclear physicists only talk to nuclear physicists and econometricians to econometricians. One wonders sometimes if science will not grind to a stop in an assemblage of walled-in hermits, each mumbling to himself words in a private language that only he can understand.
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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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What exists, is possible.
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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[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there?
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 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.
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Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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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