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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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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
Wit
Scientists
Requires
Scientist
Technologists
Bits
Humanists
Bring
Wits
Social
Economists
Economist

More quotes by 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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[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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Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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... the fouling of the nest which has been typical of man's activity in the past on a local scale now seems to be extending to the whole world society.
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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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.
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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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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What exists, is possible.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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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.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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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?
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.
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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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.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong, Yet hate is short, and love is very long.
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