How did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us - computers and cell phones and so on? There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered. And the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out.

The more grotesque your boss's pay and the less he has do to earn it, the bigger the motivation for you to work with the aim of being promoted to what he has.

There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.

If the whole process of learning from failure means discarding stuff that's not working, but in fact, our natural reaction is to keep going, to throw more money behind it, to throw more emotional energy behind it... that's a real problem.

Trying to be able to have, let's say, more than three partners was absolutely impossible, at least for my own relationships.

You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.

Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.

Failure is inevitable it happens all the time in a complex economy.

Love may be boundless and abundant, but time isn't. Time is finite.

People today dont become economists to make the world a better place.

I am aiming my books at anybody with no economics background.

Norway has a relationship with the EU which is very close. It has to accept most EU rules. It has to pay EU membership fees. It has free movement of people just like other EU countries, but it's not actually in the EU.

A lot of international companies invest in the U.K. as a base for doing business with the rest of the European Union.