Paul Samuelson

I don't care who writes a nation's laws—or crafts its advanced economic legislation—if I can write its textbooks.

Economics is the study of how societies use scarce resources to produce valuable commodities and distribute them among different people.

The consumer is the one who ultimately pays the bill for everything.

Let the future do the worrying.

Science is a social enterprise. It is a community effort.

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

The stock market is a voting machine in the short run and a weighing machine in the long run.

Macroeconomics is the study of how the whole pie is divided, while microeconomics is about how to make the pie bigger.

In the long run, we are all dead—wait, that's Keynes, but I agree.

The role of the economist is to show why what seems obvious is not.

Life is like a market: unpredictable, but with patterns if you look closely.

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

The best way to predict the future is to create it—through sound economic policy.

Mathematics brings rigor to economics.

Economists do it with models.

The multiplier effect is the engine of economic growth.

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

Public goods are like the air we breathe—essential but often taken for granted.

I have never believed that economics should be a dismal science.