University Of Oxford Alumni

"Tut, man, decide promptly, but never give any reasons for your decisions. Your decisions may be right, but your reasons are sure to be wrong."

"A man wants no protection when his conduct is strictly right."

"Whatever is contrary, bonos mores est decorum, the principles of our law prohibit, and the King's Court, as the general censor and guardian of the public manners, is bound to restrain and punish."

"As mathematical and absolute certainty is seldom to be attained in human affairs, reason and public utility require that judges and all mankind in forming their opinions of the truth of facts should be regulated by the superior number of the probabilities on the one side or the other whether the amount of these probabilities be expressed in words and arguments or by figures and numbers."

"Anciently, the Courts of justice did sit on Sundays."

"The study of human societies and economics is of great importance, and it is not the purpose of the book to suggest otherwise. Rather it is to argue that conventional economics offers a very misleading view of how the world actually operates, and that it needs to be replaced."

"But Adam Smith was a philosopher as well as well as an economist, famous in his time as much for his Theory of Moral Sentiments as for The Wealth of Nations. And as he understood so well, society is more than the sum of its individual parts."

"Many Europeans, while admiring the strength and power of the American economy, undoubtedly feel that the system of social values which prevails in the United States, manifested in the acute problems evident in the inner cities and the level of violent crime, for example, leaves much to be desired."

"Even in financial markets, the concept of market efficiency does not hold."

"The linear, mechanistic view of the world which pervades orthodox economics is simply not capable of capturing the richness and complexity of the rhythms and fluctuations of developed economies."

"We need to abandon the economist's notion of the economy as a machine, with its attendant concept of equilibrium. A more helpful way of thinking about the economy is to imagine it as a living organism."

"Keynes tried to show that market economies could settle in equilibrium states in which the labour market did not clear, and in which the level of unemployment was high. He believed that this was due to a particular example of market failure, developed in his concept of effective demand."

"Once the true relationship between inflation and unemployment is understood, with luck and skill, a free lunch is possible."

"In most Western economies, the general relationship is not in fact between the rate of inflation and the level of unemployment, but between the rate of change of inflation and the rate of change of unemployment."

"By any reasonable criteria, the discipline of economics as a whole, in its present state, is sadly lacking."

"Baseball players or cricketers do not need to be able to solve explicitly the non-linear differential equations which govern the flight of the ball. They just catch it."

"The reader might reflect that an awful lot of supposing has to take place in order for the quantity theory of money to be true."

"The behavior of the economy as a whole, at the aggregate, macro-level, is built up from the individual equations at the micro-level."

"The model of competitive equilibrium which has been discussed so far is set in a timeless environment. People and companies all operate in a world in which there is no future and hence no uncertainty."

"Despite the high salaries involved, employing economists is a cost-effective way for banks, and stockbrokers to secure exposure in the media."

"The second part of the New Right's policy package has been the belief that free-market solutions are always best. It is this latter view which is profoundly mistaken. Markets and profits are crucial, but the pure free-market model itself is deeply flawed."

"The temptation to use mathematics is irresistible for economists. It appears to convey the appropriate air of scientific authority and precision to economists' musings."

"At 2 per cent growth a year, an economy doubles in size in just thirty years."

"The importance to Smith of the overall set of values in which the economy operates is generally ignored by his followers in the late twentieth century. His economics, based upon individual self-interest, is remembered, but his moral framework is not."

"The obstacles facing academic economists are formidable, for tenure and professional advancement still depend to a large extent on a willingness to comply with and to work within the tenets of orthodox theory."

"[ John Aubrey, 1667] He was a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased."

"The books of men have their day and grow obsolete. God's word is like Himself, "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.""

"Generosity makes us happiest. We'll be happier people when we share, not when we impose, but when we learn from one another. Because when I'm connected to everyone I disappear … in being excellent you lose yourself. And when you're connected to everyone, that's the best thing that can happen."

"The opposite of consumption isn't thrift. It's generosity."

"The question is: why are there markets of food at all?"

"When you introduce markets in food, then you introduce two very simple rules. The first rule is this: if you have money you can get the food from wherever around the world. The other rule markets impose is this: if you do not have money, you will starve. This is an important point … The reason why people starve is because of poverty … not because of a shortage of food … but because the only way to access the food is through the market."

"We are all familiar with the idea: Give a man a fish and you'll feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and you'll feed him for a lifetime. That sounds reasonable enough. … But think of the model that rests on. It constructs people in developing countries that sort of people sitting by the rivers and eating fish and then they look at the river and said: "- So what's that? - It looks like a fish. - Well, how do we get it out? - Well I have no idea, we would have to wait for white man to come and tell us." It's important to remember that actually there are systems of governance that already exist. There are models of development that already exist in developing countries that actually are much more sustainable than the model of free markets that we have been trying to export."

"We are not the consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors."

"The problem is that we are living now with the consequences of the others people mistake. It would be nice to make our own and learn from them. That is the art of democracy. That is the art of citizenship."

"It was a great game, and exciting and dramatic and even at times tragic - but funny it emphatically was not."

"Though addicted to the theory of numbers, he was not in any sense a recluse; on the contrary he entered with zest into every form of social enjoyment in Oxford... He had the rare power of utilizing stray hours of leisure, and it was in such odd times that he accomplished most of his scientific work. After attending a picnic in the afternoon, he could mount to those serene heights in the theory of numbers... Then he could of a sudden come down from these heights to attend a dinner, and could conduct himself there, not as a mathematical genius lost in reverie and pointed out as a poor and eccentric mortal, but on the contrary as a thorough man of the world greatly liked by everybody."

"In 1858 he was selected by [the British Association] to prepare a report upon the Theory of Numbers. It was prepared in five parts, extending over the years 1859-1865. It is neither a history nor a treatise, but something intermediate. The author analyzes with remarkable clearness and order the works of mathematicians for the preceding century upon the theory of congruences, and upon that of binary quadratic forms. He returns to the original sources, indicates the principle and sketches the course of the demonstrations, and states the result, often adding something of his own. The work has been pronounced to be the most complete and elegant monument ever erected to the theory of numbers, and the model of what a scientific report ought to be."

"Whewell, the master of Trinity College Cambridge, wrote The Plurality of Worlds... Whewell pointed out what he called law of waste traceable in the Divine economy; and his argument was that the other planets were waste effects, the Earth the only oasis in the desert of our system, the only world inhabited by intelligent beings; Sir David Brewster... wrote a fiery answer entitled "More worlds than one, the creed of the philosopher and the hope of the Christian." In 1855 Smith wrote an essay on this subject... in which the fallibility both of men of science and of theologians was impartially exposed. It was his first and only effort at popular writing."

"[H]e had a difficulty in deciding between classics and mathematics, and there is a story to the effect that he finally solved the difficulty by tossing up a penny. He certainly used the expression: but the reasons which determined his choice in favor of mathematics were first, his weak sight, which made thinking preferable to reading, and secondly the opportunity..."

"He could see through the vanity and folly of a friend, and yet retain a never changing affection for him. Of his own life, he seldom or never spoke; he was not an egotist, and his own sayings or doings did not seem to interest him afterwards."

"He was indulgent to the failings of young men, and felt a humane pity for persons who had lost their character. He was one of whom it might be said that 'he would have stood by a friend, not only in adversity, but in disgrace.'"

"He was very desirous to promote the interests of Natural Science in Oxford, and was in favour of some measure which would have made the knowledge of a portion of some one of the Natural Sciences the condition of obtaining a degree. The teachers of these sciences had long been fighting a battle against the older traditions of the University; they had now become the study of a few, but he clearly saw that they could never truly flourish until an interest in them was more generally diffused... But he was also the best friend that the older studies... for he could speak with authority, and he was firmly convinced that in education Science should not supersede Literature. He deplored equally the want of literary culture which he observed in many scientific men, and the gross ignorance of the most general facts of Science which prevails in the world at large, especially at English Universities and Public Schools. In a similar spirit he was anxious to encourage at Oxford the study of Medicine and also of Engineering, thinking that they would supply a missing link between the Physical Sciences and the older studies of the University."

"His mathematical speculations could have been shared by a very few, not more than two or three, of his contemporaries at Oxford. Yet he did not withdraw himself from business or society. He was not the silent philosopher who is lost in reverie, or who, while acknowledged to be a mathematical genius, is pointed at by mankind as a poor and eccentric mortal. He was a thorough man of the world and greatly liked by everybody."

"In those days he was almost equally a lover of Classics and Mathematics. ...Even in the last years of his life he was in the habit of taking with him Greek books to read during the Vacation."

"Though not a poet or creative genius, he was... possessed of greater natural abilities than any one else whom I have known at Oxford. He had the clearest and most lucid mind, and a natural experience of the world and of human character hardly ever to be found in one so young. He took up all subjects at the right end; he knew whereabouts the truth lay even when he was imperfectly acquainted with the facts. And he was the most amiable and good-natured of young men. I might apply to him the words in which Plato describes the youthful Athenian Mathematician, Theaetetus, where he says: "In all my acquaintance, which is very large, I never knew any one who was his equal in natural gifts. He had a quickness of apprehension which was almost unrivalled, and he was exceedingly gentle. There was a union of qualities in him which I have never seen in any other, and should scarcely have thought possible, for quick wits have generally quick tempers... but he moved surely and smoothly and successfully in the paths of knowledge and enquiry. He flowed on silently like a river of oil. At his age it was wonderful. He was also surprisingly liberal about money, though his fortune was only moderate. (Theætetus 144)."

"I do not know what Henry Smith may be at the subjects of which he professes to know something; but I never go to him about a matter of scholarship, in a line where he professes to know nothing, without learning more from him than I can get from any one else."

"The first demonstration (Disq. Arith., Arts. 125-145) which is presented by Gauss in a form very repulsive to any but the most laborious students, has been resumed by Lejeune Dirichlet in a memoir in Crelle's Journal... and has been developed by him with that luminous perspicuity by which his mathematical writings are distinguished."

"'Legendre's Law of Quadratic Reciprocity' ... is ...the most important general truth in the science of integral numbers which has been discovered since the time of Fermat. It has been called by Gauss 'the gem of the higher arithmetic,' and is equally remarkable whether we consider the simplicity of its enunciation, the difficulties which for a long time attended its demonstration, or the number and variety of the results which have been obtained by its means. ...[W]e find in the 'Opuscula Analytica' of Euler... a memoir... which contains a general and very elegant theorem from which the Law of Reciprocity is immediately deducible, and which is, vice versâ, deducible from that law. But Euler... expressly observes that the theorem is undemonstrated; and this would seem to be the only place in which he mentions it in connexion with the theory of the Residues of Powers; though in other researches he has frequently developed results which are consequences of the theorem, and which relate to the linear forms of the divisors of quadratic formulae. But here also his conclusions repose on induction only; though in one memoir he seems to have imagined... that he had obtained a satisfactory demonstration."

"The problem of the direct determination of the primitive roots of a prime number is one of the 'cruces' of the Theory of Numbers. Euler, who first observed the peculiarity of these numbers, has yet left us no rigorous proof of their existence; though assuming their existence, he succeeded in accurately determining their number. The defect in his demonstration was first supplied by Gauss, who has also proposed an indirect method for finding a primitive root."

"We must confine ourselves to what we may term the great highways of the science; and... we must wholly pass by many outlying researches of great interest and importance, as we propose rather to exhibit in a clear light the most fundamental and indispensable theories, than to embarrass the treatment of a subject, already sufficiently complex, with a multitude of details, which, however important in themselves, are not essential to the comprehension of the whole."