Quote

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.

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
Particular
Rarely
Political
Consequences
People
Consequence
Benefited
Large
Struggled
Conflict
Rests
Universal
Injured
Ignorance
Opposed
Policy
Extent

More quotes by Kenneth E. Boulding

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Even personal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much the same kind of process by which we learn our common values. Purely personal tastes, indeed, can only survive in a culture which tolerates them, that is, which has a common value that private tastes of certain kinds should be allowed.
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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In any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
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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[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there?
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 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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Humble, honest, ignorance is one of the finest flowers of the human spirit
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The concept of a value-free science is absurd.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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The image of the frontier is probably one of the oldest images of mankind, and it is not surprising that we should find it hard to get rid of.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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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.
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?
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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Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.
Kenneth E. Boulding
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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.
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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If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.
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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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