I think economics - and this is what I've tried to impart - has a tremendous amount of human interest in it.
Interpretation
Economics is deeply connected to human experiences and societal interactions.
In this quote, Paul Samuelson emphasizes that economics is not merely a dry study of numbers and models, but rather a discipline rich with human stories and interactions. Understanding economics involves recognizing its impact on people's lives, decisions, and the society at large, thereby highlighting the human interest intricately woven into economic theories and practices.
In practice
In a speech on economic policy, you could quote Samuelson to emphasize the human impact of economic theories.
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.
Sector-specific price declines, uncomfortable as they may be for producers in that sector, are generally not a problem for the economy as a whole and do not constitute deflation.
The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.
The recurrence of periods of depression and mass unemployment has discredited capitalism in the opinion of injudicious people. Yet these events are not the outcome of the operation of the free market. They are on the contrary the result of well-intentioned but ill-advised government interference with the market.
No pecuniary consideration is more urgent, than the regular redemption and discharge of the public debt: on none can delay be more injurious, or an economy of time more valuable.
If you don't talk about families, then it's easy to disembody subprime mortgages and asset securitization and unemployment rates without remembering that every one of those numbers is a million families.
We will not have any more crashes in our time.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.