I am saying that the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behaviour

Economy is the art of making the most of life.

Even a wizard would have a great deal of difficulty repealing the economic law that higher minimum wages reduce employment. Since politicians are not wizards, they should not try.

Along with others, I have tried to pry economists away from narrow assumptions about self interest. Behavior is driven by a much richer set of values and preferences.

Different constraints are decisive for different situations, but the most fundamental constraint is limited time.

Still, intuitive assumptions about behavior is only the starting point of systematic analysis, for alone they do not yield many interesting implications.

The most fundamental constraint is limited time

My work on human capital began with an effort to calculate both private and social rates of return to men, women, blacks, and other groups from investments in different levels of education.

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.

The Treatise tries to analyze not only modern Western families, but also those in other cultures and the changes in family structure during the past several centuries.

Why in almost all societies have married women specialized in bearing and rearing children and in certain agricultural activities, whereas married men have done most of the fighting and market work?

When you hope for the best for sure something better will happen.

The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation.

At the end of our lives it is our loves we remember most, because they are what shaped us. We have grown to be who we are around them, as around a stake.

When farmers and ranchers are confronted by weather-related disasters that are beyond their control, we need to do something to help.

When we've finished the current tour I'm going to go back to Italy and see if I can do some more writing.

Art among a religious race produces reliques [sic]; among a military one, trophies; among a commercial one, articles of trade.

We're all hypocrites. We all say one thing and do another. But why don't we try to do what we say more than what we don't?

People assume that I came back to Washington because of the Post, but the truth is less romantic. I came back for a job.

I'm always talking about the issue of Puerto Rico.I also spoke about it on the Senate floor, and I think it should be given the importance, the priority it deserves.

The strength of weak people constantly appalls me. Have you ever seen a vine kill an oak tree? Deadly.