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

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.

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 they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know.

Your problem is in thinking the sky's the limit. Why set limits?

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

I don't like to label myself. I know I'm very hard to pigeonhole.

Hey, I work one full hour a day!

Faced with a choice between the survival of the planet and a new set of matching tableware, most people would choose the tableware.

Zhang is a friend of mine: he said forget about acting and just do normal things in the movie.

I'm part of that generation that grew up watching TV, and being an actor was all about being on TV or being in films.

An adequate share of humor and laughter represents an essential part of the diet of the healthy person.