I don't care who writes a nation's laws - or crafts its advanced treaties - if I can write its economics textbooks.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of economic education in shaping a society's values and decisions, more than political laws or treaties.
In this quote, Paul Samuelson highlights the profound impact of education, particularly in economics, on a nation's structure and future. He suggests that the way people understand and engage with economic concepts can influence their actions and beliefs more than the laws and treaties that govern them. By stating that he doesn't care about who writes laws, he implies that knowledge and education in economics are foundational to everything else in society.
In practice
In a speech addressing a community college graduation, one could use this quote to stress the importance of education in shaping future leaders.
To a person of analytical ability, perceptive enough to realise that mathematical equipment was a powerful sword in economics, the world of economics was his or her oyster in 1935. The terrain was strewn with beautiful theorems begging to be picked up and arranged in unified order.
I can't think of a president who has been overburdened by a knowledge of economics.
My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.
Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.
My family was well off but not rich. I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a hundred different employers and wouldn't get a nibble. That was a disequilibrium system. I realized that the ordinary old-fashioned Euclidean geometry didn't apply.
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
People who read are not too lazy to turn on the television; they prefer books.
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
It is blessed to eat into the very soul of the Bible until the very essence of the Bible flows from you.
That can be the most painstaking aspect of being a teen, figuring out what the world really looks like. If you find someone in a book, you know you're not alone and that's what's so comforting about books.
Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.
In a time of turbulence and change, it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.
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