Economics

"Eradication of extreme poverty has been identified as a priority, and specific targets have been set for prescribed measures. Many said the potential benefits of globalization are understood but people have yet to feel them. It is agreed that part of the solution lies in sovereign States giving priority to the needs of their people, especially the poorest. States, however, must work with the private sector and civil society to solve the problems of globalization. A more equitable world economy has been called for, one where those who have more do more for those who have less."

"My friends, our challenge today is not to save Western civilization — or Eastern, for that matter. All civilization is at stake, and we can save it only if all peoples join together in the task. You Americans did so much, in the last century, to build an effective multilateral system, with the United Nations at its heart. Do you need it less today, and does it need you less, than 60 years ago? Surely not. More than ever today, Americans, like the rest of humanity, need a functioning global system through which the world’s peoples can face global challenges together. And in order to function more effectively, the system still cries out for far-sighted American leadership, in the Truman tradition. I hope and pray that the American leaders of today, and tomorrow, will provide it."

"Through the United Nations, we are working together to make human rights a reality for everyone - to give all human beings real choices in life, and a real say in decisions that affect their lives. In all these areas and more, the United Nations is working for you. But it can do little without you. After all, it belongs to you, the peoples of the world. And therefore it can work much better with your help and your ideas. My friends, the new millennium need not be a time of fear or anxiety. If we work together and have faith in our own abilities, it can be a time of hope and opportunity. It's up to us to make it so."

"More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that, my friends, is why we have the United Nations. Through the United Nations, we are working together to preserve peace; to outlaw weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately; to bring mass murderers and war criminals to justice. Through the United Nations, we are working together to defeat Aids and other epidemics; to control climate change; to make clean air and water available to everyone. Through the United Nations, we are working together to ensure that the global market benefits all of us, allowing the poor to lift themselves out of poverty."

"to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,"

"to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and"

"to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and"

"to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and"

"to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,"

"to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and"

"to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and"

"to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and"

"Without precise predictability, control is impotent and almost meaningless. In other words, the lesser the predictability, the harder the entity or system is to control, and vice versa. If our universe actually operated on linear causality, with no surprises, uncertainty, or abrupt changes, all future events would be absolutely predictable in a sort of waveless orderliness."

"I am profoundly skeptical about our abilities to predict the future in general, and human behavior in particular."

"Dynamic systems studies usually are not designed to predict what will happen. Rather, they're designed to explore what would happen, if a number of driving factors unfold in a range of different ways."

"A forecast can only be based on a diagnosis about current trends if it is to be based on something other than wishful thinking. This is why I was never a strong supporter of the distinction between forecasts and projections: our best forecasts are intelligent projections. Moreover, it turns out that learning about the diagnosis that underlies a forecast is often much more rewarding than learning about the forecast itself."

"I have always believed that people have misjudged the accuracy of economic forecasting... During the 1980s and 1990s, I researched and applied methods of high frequency economic forecasting, to be used by themselves, and for objective establishment of initial conditions for longer range forecasts from structural dynamic models that carry forward the pioneering contributions of Jan Tinbergen."

"Question 8. Is There a Measurable, Qualitatively Distinctive Prediction of String Theory? String theories can, in principle, make many "s" (such as the calculation of the mass ratios of s and s, Higgs masses and couplings, s, etc.). They can also make many new predictions (such as the masses of the supersymmetric partners of the observed particles, new gauge interactions, etc.). These would be sufficient to establish the validity of the theory, however in each case one can imagine (although with some difficulty) conventinal field theories coming up with similar pre or post dictions. It would be nice to predict a phenomenon, which would be accessible at observable energies and is uniquely characteristic of string theory."

"If you make a great number of predictions, the ones that were wrong will soon be forgotten, and the ones that turn out to be true will make you famous."

"Psychologist Philip Tetlock (following the lead of Isaiah Berlin), divided the world of political forecasters into hedgehogs and foxes."

"As with anything else, there are good and bad ways to forecast."

"[Engineering concerns] the creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.""

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future."

"The successes of modern control theory in the design of highly accurate space navigation systems have stimulated its use in the theoretical analyses of economic and biological systems. Similarly, the effectiveness of computer simulation techniques in the macroscopic analyses of physical systems has brought into vogue the use of computer-based econometric models for purposes of forecasting, economic planning, and management."

"It is my hope that in such a way we may again, as Marx claimed, find scientific arguments in the competition between various systems, but up-to-date scientific arguments rather than obsolete ones. This more fundamental research in economics deserves relatively more attention and resources than the more superficial versions of economic research directed at forecasting or analysing very short-term fluctuations in market prices, on which quite some money is being spent to-day."

"The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to “cover” new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world."

"This led me to the thought that it might be easy to pretend to be a Seer. After all, if one pretended to have visions of the far distant future, how would anyone know if they came true or not?"

"Forecasting by bureaucrats tends to be used for anxiety relief rather than for adequate policy making."

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

"For the folk-community does not exist on the fictitious value of money but on the results of productive labour, which is what gives money its value."

"As this body has no authority to make anything whatever a tender in payment of private debts, it necessarily follows that nothing but gold and silver coin can be made a legal tender for that purpose, and that Congress cannot authorize the payment in any species of paper currency of any other debts but those due to the United States, or such debts of the United States as may, by special contract, be made payable in such paper."

"Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it."

"Money isn't everything, but it's way ahead of whatever's in second place."

"Those who take money are bound to carry out the work for which they get a fee, while I, because I refuse to take it, am not obliged to talk with anyone against my will."

"I think this piece will help to boil thy pot."

"No, let the monarch's bags and coffers hold The flattering, mighty, nay, all-mighty gold."

"It is money makes the mare to trot."

"I get a few bruises, but I think of the money and I'm alright."

"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world — no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

"A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men ..."

"A dollar is something that you multiply — something that causes an expansion of your house and your mechanical equipment, something that accelerates like speed; and that may be also slowed up or deflated. It is a value that may be totally imaginary, yet can for a time provide half-realized dreams."

"Neither can anything we desire be got without money, or what money represents, i.e. without the command of exchangeable things. All the things that we so often say "cannot be had for money" we might with equal truth say cannot be had or enjoyed without it. Friendship cannot be had for money, but how often do the things that money commands enable us to form and develop our friendships! … But even "waiting" requires money, if not so much as marrying does. In fact, a man can be neither a saint, nor a lover, nor a poet, unless he has comparatively recently had something to eat. The things that money commands are strictly necessary to the realisation on earth of any programme whatsoever. The range of things, then, that money can command in no case secures any of those experiences or states of consciousness which make up the whole body of ultimately desired things, and yet none of the things that we ultimately desire can be had except on the basis of the things that money can command. Hence nothing that we really want can infallibly be secured by things that can be exchanged, but neither can it under any circumstances be enjoyed without them."

"We are in danger of being overwhelmed with irredeemable paper, mere paper, representing not gold nor silver; no, Sir, representing nothing but broken promises, bad faith, bankrupt corporations, cheated creditors, and a ruined people."

"Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then give all you can."

"No honest man has been able to save any money in the last twenty years."

"Money is the MOMENT to me. Money is my MOOD."

"Cash. I just am not happy when I don't have it. The minute I have it I have to spend it. And I just buy STUPID THINGS."

"Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrow money to do it with."

"On en trouve [l'argent] toujours quand il s’agit d’aller faire tuer des hommes sur la frontière: il n’y en a plus quand il faut les sauver."

"When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion."