I think one of the things we learned from the physicists and also the theoretical biologists is the idea that when you're dealing with very complex s….

I think the idea that a society has to be responsible for all of its citizens, those who do well and those who do not, is really a precondition of a ….

Usefulness depends on tractability..

One way of looking at Impossibility Theorem is that we proposed some criteria for what a good system should be: what is it you want from a voting sys….

Knowledge is a free good. The biggest cost in its transmission is not in the production or distribution of knowledge, but in its assimilation. This i….

Unsolved problems, that's one of the great signs of progress in my opinion..

The world is changing. We're not really proceeding on a stationary basis..

One thing I learned from meteorology is that being an actual science was no guarantee of exactness..

The MD is well aware that the forecasts are no good but he needs them for planning purposes..

Vast ills have followed a belief in certainty..

My research, even before 1972, moved in directions beyond those cited for the Nobel Memorial Prize. Most of it, in one way or another, deals with inf….

In my [Impossibility] theorem I'm assuming that the information is a ranking. Each voter can say of any two candidates, I prefer this one to this one….

I think on the efficiency level, not only the distribution level, capitalism is a flawed system. It probably has the same virtues as Churchill attrib….

My undergraduate education, at the City College in New York, was made possible only by the existence of that excellent free institution and the finan….

The trouble is that the risks that are being hedged very well by new financial securities are financial risks. And it appears to me that the real thi….

I think the development of the venture capital system has been an example of something which is a successful improvement in risk-bearing. It doesn't ….

I am not really inclined to think there is any very effective regulation of the derivative securities markets that would be useful. People who go int….

The switch to the market in Eastern Europe, of course, has not exactly been one of the greatest advertisements for the market. There's no question th….

I do sense, as compared with let's say the early '50s, there's somewhat more of a careerism. I don't think it's anything special to economics; it's e….

The health care provisions are presumably for individuals. And whoever pays for them, whether it's paid by the individual, state, whatever, the value….

Markets are not, in my opinion, a full solution to any problem. The obvious problem they don't meet is the concerns of the welfare of individuals who….