'There are no easy pickings.' That would be a more accurate, less dramatic statement than 'There's no such thing as a free lunch.'
Interpretation
Nothing worthwhile comes without effort; you cannot gain something for nothing.
This quote emphasizes the principle that achieving success or obtaining benefits typically requires hard work and sacrifice. Paul Samuelson underscores the idea that while the phrase 'There's no such thing as a free lunch' suggests a more dramatic interpretation, the reality is that true rewards come from dedicated effort, reinforcing the value of hard work and realistic expectations in life and economics.
In practice
During a motivational speech about the importance of hard work.
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.
See to it that each hour's feelings, and thoughts, and actions are pure and true; then will your life be such.
Lately, I'd been feeling like I was standing outside watching everything and everybody. Wishing I could take the part of me that was over there and the part of me that was over here and push them together—make myself into one whole person like everybody else.
Our plans miscarry because they have no aim.
[I] learned ... that friends are a good source of food and soul when one has not yet gotten the hang of cooking or living (as opposed to dying) alone. That nothing-not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state-will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. I tried all of these things.
There is no use in running before you are sent; there is no use in attempting to do God's work without God's power. A man working without this unction, a man working without this anointing, a man working without the Holy Ghost upon him, is losing time after all.
The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. The grass is greenest where it is watered.
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