My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.

...it is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it.

I attended schools in Seattle through the University of Washington, from which I was graduated in 1931. I spent the next year at Northwestern University.

The main insight learned from interdisciplinary studies is the return to specialization

Competition is a tough weed, not a delicate flower.

There is only one social science and we are its practitioners

If you never miss a plane, you’re spending too much time at the airport.

I recall my mother asking in about 1946 what I was and I replied proudly that I was a professor. A decade later she repeated her question and I repeated my answer. "No promotion?" was her comment.

Theories are not rejected by cirsumstantial evidence: it takes a theory to beat a theory.

It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation.

All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.

No, no, no, so not getting the point of fear. Because fear wasn't about what made sense. Fear was about possibilities. Not things that happened. Things that might.

I am more one for the story, I think, than the action.

Old-fashioned ways which no longer apply to changed conditions are a snare in which the feet of women have always become readily entangled.

Is not sorrow, all sorrow, selfish?

My good friend once said, "You guys think you're the stars in your own movie."

Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?

As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.

You are either becoming more like Christ every day or you are becoming less like Him. There is no neutral position in the Lord.

I am not anyone's enemy.

To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your “Core Attachments,” means apologizing for your very existence.