Douglass North Quotes

I continue to be a photographer; I have enjoyed fishing and hunting with a close friend; and have owned two ranches, first in northern California and then in the state of Washington.

To predict the future we would have to know today what we will learn tomorrow which will shape our future actions

My record at the University of California as an undergraduate was mediocre to say the best.

My early work and publications centered around expanding on the analysis of life insurance in my dissertation and its relationship to investment banking.

Our family life was certainly not intellectual.

It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory.

My brother and sister are both older than I am and were born before my father went off to World War I.

In 1972 I married again, to Elisabeth Case; she continues to be wife, companion, critic and editor: a partner in the projects and programs that we undertake.

What the war did was give me the opportunity of three years of continuous reading, and it was in the course of reading that I became convinced that I should become an economist.

I learned to fly an airplane, and had my own airplane during the 1960s.

I had hoped to go to law school, but the war started, and because of the strong feeling that I did not want to kill anybody, I joined the Merchant Marine when I graduated from Berkeley.