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Joan Robinson
45 quotes
“Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Amartya Sen's article in 'The Economist' dated November 18th, 2005
“It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Progress is slow partly from mere intellectual inertia. In a subject where there is no agreed procedure for knocking out errors, doctrines have a long life. A professor teaches what he was taught, and his pupils, with a proper respect and reverence for teachers, set up a resistance against his critics for no other reason than that it was he whose pupils they were.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I began to read Capital, just as one reads any book, to see what was in it; I found a great deal that neither its followers nor its opponents had prepared me to expect.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In general, the nightmare quality of Marx's thought gives it, in this bedevilled age, an air of greater reality than the gentle complacency of the orthodox academics. Yet he, at the same time, is more encouraging than they, for he releases hope as well as terror from Pandora's box, while they preach only the gloomy doctrine that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Voltaire remarked that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft if you give them plenty of arsenic at the same time. The sheep, in this figure, may well stand for the complacent apologists of capitalism; Marx's penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there is any law governing the distribution of income between classes, it still remains to be discovered.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If knowledge develops as capital accumulates, there need be no tendency to diminishing returns, and with constant returns there can be no tendency for the rate of profit to fall (always assuming that the problem of effective demand as ruled out).”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Modern technique, as Marx pointed out, fosters the concentration of capital, and the levels of profits is supported by a scarcity of enterprise which is not due to the real cost of risk-bearing, but to the scarcity of individuals who have anything to risk.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the rate of investment which governs the rate of saving, and not vice versa.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If a rise in wages does not raise prices, a fall will not reduce them.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Marx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The orthodox doctrines of economics which were dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had a clear message. They supported laisser faire, free trade, the gold standard, and the universally advantageous effects of the pursuit of profit by competitive private enterprise.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In all the talk in the Principles (as opposed to the formal analysis) it is not the saving of rentiers but the energy of entrepreneurs which governs accumulation.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A depression is a situation of self-fulfilling pessimism.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reality is never a golden age.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rosa Luxemburg maintained that the capitalist system can keep up its rate of investment (and therefore its profits) only so long as it is expanding geographically.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But once we bring historical time into the argument, it is not so easy to present the free play of the market as an ideal mechanism for maximizing welfare and securing social justice.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a large part of the market for British textiles was in the colonies, a fall in the price of tea and cocoa caused unemployment in Lancashire.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is an unearthly, mystical element in Friedman's thought. The mere existence of a stock of money somehow promotes expenditure. But insofar as he offers an intelligible theory, it is made up of elements borrowed from Keynes.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Time, so to say, runs at right angles to the page at each point on the curve.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nature of technology depends very much upon what the public can be induced to put up with.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing as a normal period of history. Normality is a fiction of economic textbooks.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a popular error that bureaucracy is less flexible than private enterprise. It may be so in detail, but when large scale adaptations have to be made, central control is far more flexible. It may take two months to get an answer to a letter from a government department, but it takes twenty years for an industry under private enterprise to readjust itself to a fall in demand.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is impossible to add the stock of money to the flow of saving.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Michal Kalecki's claim to priority of publication is indisputable.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Capital' is not what capital is called, it is what its name is called.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is high time to abandon the mainstream and take to the turbulent waters of truly dynamic analysis.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the tygers of wrath go the other way. Do not ask me why. It is just a fact I noticed when I was looking through field glasses from a machan.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why did the hunters in the Wealth of Nations exchange beavers for deer?”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is much easier to organize control over one industry serving many markets than over one market served by the products of several industries.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Income from property is not the reward of waiting, it is the reward of employing a good stockbroker.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At any moment there is certainly not balanced trade between the various areas of the habitable globe that happens to be under separate national governments — there is an ever-changing pattern of deficits and surpluses.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It seems that neither the Keynesian nor the Marxian prognosis of the future of capitalism is being fulfilled and we are left without any particular theory as to what will happen next.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To supply goods is a source of profit, but to supply services is a ' burden upon industry '. It is for this reason that when, as a nation, ' we have never had it so good ' we find that we ' cannot afford ' just what we most need.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An agent must have some discretion.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bastard Keynesian doctrine, evolved in the United States, invaded the economic faculties of the world, floating on the wings of the almighty dollar.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the merchant had observed that the marginal utility of daughters decreases with surprising rapidity.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Until recently, Marx used to be treated in academic circles with contemptuous silence, broken only by an occasional mocking footnote. But modern developments in academic theory, forced by modern developments in economic life — the analysis of monopoly and the analysis of unemployment — have shattered the structure of orthodox doctrine and destroyed the complacency with which economists were wont to view the working of laissez-faire capitalism. Their attitude to Marx, as the leading critic of capitalism, is therefore much less cocksure than it used to be. In my belief, they have much to learn from him.”
Joan Robinson (1903–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source