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

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.

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?

I think my strength is always been in being very natural. I think Shakespeare and things like that would be more a stretch for me.

I agree with the many who consider freezing all sorts of weapons systems a first step in a realistic disarmament policy.

When you make something you are always offering some choices and denying others.

Hope comes in many forms.

Education is a capital to the poor man, and an interest to the rich man.

Nobody works as hard for his money as the man who marries it.

Take eloquence and wring its neck.

Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.

And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.

Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.