Economic Relevance Quotes

We have a problem in Africa with our education system. It is a relic from the past. The education system was meant to create clerks to help the administrative role of the colonial power. So the emphasis was on neat handwriting and how to write good reports and things like that, and if you move further, then you study Shakespeare and Molière. But we don’t have enough engineers and scientists. Two percent of African university graduates study agriculture, when 70 percent of our people are living off the land. Obviously, we have a problem.

Nations are political and military entities, and so are blocs of nations. But it doesn't necessarily follow from this that they are also the basic, salient entities of economic life or that they are particularly useful for probing the mysteries of economic structure, the reasons for rise and decline of wealth. Indeed, the failure of national governments and blocs of nations to force economic life to do their bidding suggests some sort of essential irrelevance.

The knowledge we now consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information effective in action, information focused on results. Results are outside the person, in society and economy, or in the advancement of knowledge itself. To accomplish anything this knowledge has to be highly specialized.

The doctrine of Islamic economics is simplistic, incoherent and largely irrelevant to present economic challenges…. The real purpose of Islamic economics has not been economic improvement but cultivation of a distinct Islamic identity to resist cultural globalization.

Education will become the coin of the realm.

Coal is not dear for the coal-miner who can use it there and then, nor is khadi dear for the villager who manufactures his own khadi.

The concept of a general equilibrium has no relevance to the real world (in other words, classical economics is an exercise in futility).

What good does the theory [of economics] do if it is not working for people?

The so-called leading [economic] indicators no longer answer the most important questions people are raising about how they live.

Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.

Money really, really matters.

The truth seems . . . to be that in the ultimate and essential problem the economic factor is relatively superficial and unimportant.

Our biggest challenge is to eliminate the popular perception that economists don't have anything useful to say.

For most businesses, America is the most important asset on their balance sheet.