Kenneth Quotes

Knowledge exists in minds, not in books. Before what has been found can be used by practitioners, someone must organize it, integrate it, extract the message.

Economics, we learn in the history of thought, only became a science by escaping from the casuistry and moralizing of medieval thought.

The use of isoquants to describe the production function did not develop to any great extent until the thirties.

Integrative power [is] the ultimate power

[The loss-of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base.

Almost every organization... exhibits two faces a smiling face which it turns toward its members and a frowning face which it turns to the world outside.

There is something, however humble, which can properly be called skill among those who recognise themselves as economists.

The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible.

[The historical] development in the international system may almost be defined as the process by which we pass from stable war to stable peace.

One reason why the progressive state is 'cheerful' is that social conflict is diminished by it.

I have been gradually coming under the conviction, disturbing for a professional theorist, that there is no such thing as economics - there is only social science applied to economic problems.

The process of consumption is the final act in the economic drama.

Where there is hypocrisy, there is hope.

... 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.

We are born to love, as we are born to breathe and eat and drink.

The trouble with taxonomic boxes is... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside.

[on the theory of the firm] It is exactly analogous to the analysis of the reactions of a consumer by means of indifferent curves. Indeed, a consumer is merely a 'firm' whose product is 'utility.'

The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state.

Production functions involving only land, labor and capital... never work and never explain economic development.

Economists are like computers. They need to have facts punched into them.

Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits.

Consumption is the death of capital, and the only valid arguments in favor of consumption are arguments in favor of death itself.

The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market... the higher the black market price.

Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish.

[The question for the behavioral disciplines is simply] what is better, and how do we get there?

The concept of a value-free science is absurd.

These are not necessarily our agendas, but we feel a part of what a performer is, and what a performer has to say is more than just words and music.

There's a real rebirth in the artistic community to stand up for what you believe in.

Very few people say no to the ­Grammys.

I'm a child of the '60s, so I love the fact that we are returning to a time when artists are standing up.

Both cheap value stocks and more glamorous growth stocks can work well in a portfolio - if done right.

There is no limitation other than what you think.

An artist is usually the handyman in the service of inspiration.

The fire of the diamond of true Identity is always there; it just needs the Master's crafting to reveal it.

The scientist's inquiry into the causes of things is providing an ever more extensive understanding of nature.

Life is to be lived through action not by dreaming.

Industry now should become a full partner of government in supporting longrange basic research.

Scientists under all forms of government must be able to participate fully in international efforts.

My graduate studies were carried out at the California Institute of Technology.

In 1975 I met Alison Brown and in 1982 we were married. She works for Cornell Computer Services.

During my training I was trained in Psycho-politics. This was the art of capturing the minds of a nation through brainwashing and fake mental health.

My books are better thought about than read. They're insanely dull and unreadable.But they're wonderful to talk about and think about, to dip in and out of, to hold, to have on your shelf.

What I'm doing in writing has been thoroughly and exhaustively explored in other fields like visual art, music, and cinema, yet somehow it's never really been tested on the page.

It's hard to be understood when addressing many people at once. How can you ever know if you're being understood? So, I've just started being intelligently provocative. And people take the bait.

Most artists want first and foremost to be loved, secondly to make history, and money is a distant third or fourth.

I think that the special thing about radio is the off switch. If something's not pleasing you, turn it off.

I don't think that the world will ever become an unpoliced place, sadly. But I do feel that there is relative freedom on the margins.

Twitter is not art. But it inspires me in the way that art used to inspire me.

It's Twitter's combination of simplicity and complexity that is astonishing in the same way that minimalist sculpture was inspiring and enlightening.

Favoriting tweets has become a form of acknowledging that you've read what someone else has written.