Conformity can be costly in a world of uncertainty which requires innovative institutional creation because no one can know the right path to surviva…

- Douglass North

Information costs are reduced by the existence of large numbers of buyers and sellers. Under these conditions, prices embody the same information tha…

- Douglass North

To predict the future we would have to know today what we will learn tomorrow which will shape our future actions

- Douglass North

I went back to graduate school with the clear intention that what I wanted to do with my life was to improve societies, and the way to do that was to…

- Douglass North

It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist,…

- Douglass North

The evolution of government from its medieval, Mafia-like character to that embodying modern legal institutions and instruments is a major part of th…

- Douglass North

My record at the University of California as an undergraduate was mediocre to say the best.

- Douglass North

Regarding social order, [Francis] Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentr…

- Douglass North

Our family life was certainly not intellectual.

- Douglass North