Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Kenneth Boulding
164 quotes
“Canada has no cultural unity, no linguistic unity, no religious unity, no economic unity, no geographic unity. All it has is unity.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding cited in: World Union (Organization) (1982) World union. Vol 22. p. 35
“One can even go beyond know-what into know-whether. This involves the evaluative structure of the human mind which enables us to make decisions and choices among different images of the future. Human behavior cannot be explained without this further development in the hierarchy that starts with simple information. This actually goes back a long way in evolution. Even the amoeba knows whether to absorb a piece of grit or a piece of food.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1984) In: Meheroo Jussawalla, Helene Ebenfield eds. Communication and information economics: new perspectives. p. vii
“The World is a very complex system. It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1986) "Proceedings of the 7th Friends Association for Higher Education Conference, Malone College, 1986" p. 4, quoted in , The Science of Synthesis, Colorado: University of Colorado Press, 2003.
“[In science any model depends on a pre-chosen taxonomy] a set of classifications into which we divide the enormous complexity of the real world... Land, labor, and capital are extremely heterogeneous aggregates, not much better than earth, air, fire, and water.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1986) "What Went Wrong with Economics?" in: The American Economist Vol 30 (Spring) pp. 7-8, as cited in: (2013) "What Boulding Said Went Wrong with Economics, A Quarter Century On
“Economics deals with the behavior of commodities rather than with the behavior of men.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Peter F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices, New York: Truman Talley Books, E.P. Dutton, 1986, p. 21.
“[Boulding once said, in response to a forecast that someday every American would be earning $100,000 per year] So what? Someone will still have to take out the garbage.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Donella Meadows (1989) "Thoughts While Cleaning The Living Room: Domestic work is undervalued - but it doesn't need to be" in Caring For Families Vol 21. (Spring 1989). p. 16
“The trouble with taxonomic boxes is... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 75 as cited in: R. Harper, L. Palen, A. Taylor (2005) The Inside Text: Social, Cultural and Design Perspectives on SMS. p. 79
“In modern industry, research Has come to be a kind of Church Where rubber-aproned acolytes Perform their Scientific Rites And firms spend funds they do not hafter In hope of benefits Hereafter.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We cannot walk befor we toddle, Though we may toddle far too long, If we embrace a lovely Model That is consistent, clear, and wrong. - Experts from "Notes from Wooods Hole", unpublished, 1976.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is much more accurate to identify the factors of production as know-how (that is genetic information structure), energy, and materials, for, as we have seen, all processes of production involve the direction of energy by some know-how structure toward the selection, transportation, and transformation of materials into the product”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 96 quoted in: Andrew Mearman (2011) "Three cheers for Kenneth Boulding!
“Integrative power [is] the ultimate power”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most fundamental form of integrative power is the power of love.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Peace praxis is] a peace process that deals with conflict integratively.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 140 as cited in: Joseph De Rivera (2008) Handbook on Building Cultures of Peace. p. 243
“The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one‟s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover...”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 259, quoted in: Andrew Mearman (2011)
“[The integrative system] deals with such matters as respect, legitimacy, community, friendship, affection, love, and of course their opposites, across a broad scale of human relationships and interactions.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 670-671 as cited in: Christopher Spicer (1997) Organizational Public Relations: A Political Perspective. p. 248
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973) Energy reorganization act of 1973: Hearings, Ninety-third Congress, first session, on H.R. 11510. p. 248
“Production functions involving only land, labor and capital... never work and never explain economic development.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1990). "Taxonomy as a Source of Error." in Methodus Vol 2. p. 17-21, as cited in: (2013) "What Boulding Said Went Wrong with Economics, A Quarter Century On
“The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding, quoted in Dixy Lee Ray (1990). "Trashing the Planet", p. 168. Regnery Publishing, Inc. .
“The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Russell Francis Farnen (1996) Democracy, socialization, and conflicting loyalties in East and West. p. 52
“Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in Michael H. Prosser, K. S. Sitaram (1999) Civic Discourse: Intercultural, International, and Global Media. p. 11
“Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Peter J. Dougherty (2002) Who's afraid of Adam Smith?: how the market got its soul. p. 110
“Don't go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as creativity, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability–whether they are easily measured or not.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: Ramage Magnus and Karen Shipp (2009) Systems Thinkers. p. 116
“If we saw tomorrow’s newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any evolutionary process even in the arts the search for novelty becomes corrupting.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are not sent into this world to walk it in solitude. We are born to love, as we are born to breathe and eat and drink. The babe is hardly separated from his mother’s womb before he stretches out a tiny clasping hand, and from that time forth he will constantly stretch out to touch the world that lies about him and the folk that dwell therein. The purpose of our growth in life is to bring us into unity with the universe into which we are born, to make us aware that we are not lonely individual meteors hurtling blindly through an abysmal dark, but living parts of a living whole. As we grow we learn to love more and more: first ourselves; then the family within the small kingdom of the home; then the school, the wider circle of friends, the home community, the college, and the still wider community of the nation; and finally, the greatest country of all, which has no boundaries this side of Hell, and perhaps not even there.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1942) "The Practice of The Love of God", William Penn Lecture, delivered at Arch Street Meetinghouse, Philadelphia, 1942. In: Friends' Intelligencer, Vol. 99 p. 231-261
“The ultimate "causes of price" - to use a Classical term - lie deeply embedded in the psychology and techniques of mankind and his environment, and are as manifold as the sands of the sea. All economic analysis is an attempt to classify these manifold causes, to sort them out into categories of discourse that our limited minds can handle, and so to perceive the unity of structural relationship which both unites and separates the manifoldness. Our concepts of "" and "supply" are such broad categories. In whatever sense they are used, they are not ultimate determinants of anything, but they are convenient channels through which we can classify and describe the effects of the multitude of determinants of the system of economic magnitude.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1944) "A Liquidity Preference Theory of Market Prices". In: Economica, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 42 (May, 1944), pp. 55-63.
“We have defined the main task of economic analysis as the explanation of the magnitudes of economic quantities. The student will find also that the main part of this, as of most other works on the subject, is concerned with the theory of the determination of prices, wages, interest rates, incomes, and the like. He may well inquire, therefore, in the midst of so much mathematics, whether the first task of economics is not the investigation of wealth, or welfare. Some economists have endeavored to restrict the boundaries of the science to the investigation of those quantities which are numerically measurable. Well-being, under such a restriction, would not be part of economics at all.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is reason for this shift of emphasis from any actual price to a hypothetical 'equilibrium' price. It is usually more interesting to know where a train is going than to know exactly where it is at any moment. The 'equilibrium' position of any price, wage, firm, industry, or system is the position toward which it is tending. The importance of equilibrium analysis, then, is that it enables us to discuss the directions of change. If a train is in New- York and its 'equilibrium' position is in Chicago, we are reasonably confident that the general direction of its motion will be westward, even if it unaccountably decides to travel north for the first hundred and fifty miles.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 637-638 (rev. ed. 1947); cited in Macroeconomische theorie ingeleid en voortgezet. Kluwer, 2006. p. 3
“It is probable that when future historians of economic thought look back over this century, the thirties will appear as an era of rapid development in economic theory. Not only has there been unusual activity in monetary theory, theory of value. but extensive transformations have also been made in the basic theory of value. The outstanding publications in this field are, of course, Joan Robinson's Theory of Imperfect Competition and Chamberlin's Theory of Monopolistic Competition, the first produced in Cambridge, England, and the second in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These volumes mark the explicit recognition of the theory of the firm as an integral division of economic analysis upon which rests the whole fabric of equilibrium theory. General equilibrium is nothing more than the problem of the interaction of individual economic organisms, under various conditions and assumptions; as a necessary preliminary to its solution, an adequate theory of the individual organism itself is necessary.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The main key to the economics of the postwar world is a simple truism — that the rate of accumulation is equal to the rate of production less the rate of consumption. This is the "Bathtub Theorem." Production may be likened to the flow of water from the faucet, consumption to the flow down the drain. The difference between these two flows is the rate at which the water in the bathtub - the total stockpile of all goods - is accumulating. War drains the economic bathtub in a great waste of consumption. The first problem of reconstruction is to rebuild the stockpile. It can be rebuilt only by widening the gap between production and consumption, or, in the case of a single country, by importing more than is exported. It is difficult for a ravaged country to increase either its production or its net imports. Unless it can obtain outside help, therefore, it must suffer a drastic restriction of consumption. Frequently the only way consumption can be restricted is by inflation. Here, therefore, is the key to the most fundamental problems of reconstruction.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This concept of capital-rebuilding is so important that it may be desirable to digress for a moment. In the broadest sense of the word, capital means the sum total of the valuable things possessed by the individuals of a society, excluding "claims," that is, mere titles to property. The word is used to mean both the inventory of these valuable things; the houses, factories, machines, livestock, stocks of raw materials, and goods in all stages of completion; and also to mean the sum of the values of these things. It should generally be clear from the context which of these two meanings is intended.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reconstruction is merely a special case of economic progress. If we are to understand its problems thoroughly, we must examine what is meant by economic progress and try to discover how it comes about... Economic progress is not altogether easy to define and is even more difficult to measure. Nevertheless, the phrase clearly corresponds to a meaningful idea. We have only to contrast a savage society with our own. In a savage society, the same customs, the same techniques, the same ways of doing everything, from ploughing to praying, are maintained generation after generation, son following exactly in the footsteps of his father and daughter in the footsteps of her mother, without deviating an inch from the well-trodden way. In modern civilized society, on the other hand, there is constant change and flux; we are constantly improving on the methods of our ancestors, and indeed one of the surest ways to discredit anything is to call it "old-fashioned!”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The should not be confused with the profit system. By the profit system, of course, we mean the institution of private property in capital goods and the free private enterprise that goes along with it. There is no reason why the "profit motive" should be necessarily connected with the profit system. In a profit system there is nothing to prevent anyone acting on altruistic lines; there is no law that says a businessman must maximize his profits. If a businessman chose to operate with outputs, prices, and wages that yielded him a smaller profit than the maximum, but which he felt were socially more desirable, there is nothing in the profit system that would prevent him from doing this. Nothing in the profit system would prevent the most ardent liberal from refusing an increase in wages, or from accepting an unpleasant and poorly paid job. At the other extreme, there is nothing in a communist system that would do away with the profit motive, or the "advantage motive.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I seem to have come to much of the same conclusion as you have reached, though approaching it from the direction of economics and the social sciences rather than from biology - that there is a body of what have been calling "general empirical theory," or "general system theory" in your excellent terminology , which is of wide applicability in many different disciplines. I am sure there are many people all over the world who have come to essentially the same position that we have, but we are widely scattered and do not know each other, so difficult is it to cross the boundaries of the disciplines.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1953) in letter to Bertalanffy, cited in: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) General System Theory. p. 14
“In every field there is a need for writing where the main objective is to extend the reader's field of acquaintance with the complex cases of the real world. Such writing does not have to be very exact or quantitative; it does not even have to formulate or to demonstrate hypotheses. It constitutes, as it were, travel over the field of study. Travel is certainly not enough, even for a geographer, but we would feel, I imagine, that a geographer who had never travelled would be under a serious handicap. Similarly the student of organizations who has never, even vicariously through reading, been in a hospital, a bank, a research laboratory, a large corporation, a Soviet factory, a revolution, an Egyptian civil service department, and so on, has missed something. His generalizations are apt to be based on too narrow a selection of the field.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1958) "Evidences for an Administrative Science: A review of the Administrative Science Quarterly, volumes 1 and 2". In Administrative Science Quarterly. vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 1-22.as cited in: John Van Ma…
“Two possible approaches to the organization of general systems theory suggest themselves, which are to be thought of as complementary rather than competitive, or at least as two roads each of which is worth exploring. The first approach is to look over the empirical universe and to pick out certain general phenomena which are found in many different disciplines, and to seek to build up general theoretical models relevant to these phenomena. The second approach is to arrange the empirical fields in a hierarchy of complexity of organization of their basic "individual" or unit of behavior, and to try to develop a level of abstraction appropriate to each.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I sit at my desk, I know where I am. I see before me a window; beyond that some trees; beyond that the red roofs of the campus of Stanford University; beyond them the trees and the roof tops which mark the town of Palo Alto; beyond them the bare golden hills of the Hamilton Range... beyond that other mountains, range upon range, until we come to the Rockies; beyond that the Great Plains and the Mississippi; beyond that the Alleghenies; beyond that the eastern seaboard; beyond that the Atlantic Ocean; beyond that is Europe; beyond that is Asia. I know, furthermore, that if I go far enough I will come back to where I am now. In other words, I have a picture of the earth as round. I visualize it as a globe. I am a little hazy on some of the details... I probably could not draw a very good map of Indonesia, but I have a fair idea where everything is located on the face of this globe. Looking further, I visualize the globe as a small speck circling around a bright star which is the sun, in the company of many other similar specks, the planets. Looking still further, I see our star the sun as a member of millions upon millions of others in the Galaxy. Looking still further, I visualize the Galaxy as one of millions upon millions of others in the universe.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I have been talking about is knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, is not a good word for this. Perhaps one would rather say my image of the world. Knowledge has an implication of validity, of truth. What I am talking about is what I believe to be true; my subjective knowledge. It is this Image that largely governs my behavior. In about an hour I shall rise, leave my office, go to a car, drive down to my home, play with the children, have supper, perhaps read a book, go to bed. I can predict this behavior with a fair degree to accuracy because of the knowledge which I have: the knowledge that I have a home not far away, to which I am accustomed to go. The prediction, of course, may not be fulfilled. There may be an earthquake, I may have an accident with the car on the way home, I may get home to find that my family has been suddenly called away. A hundred and one things may happen. As each event occurs, however, it alters my knowledge structure or my image. And as it alters my image, I behave accordingly. The first proposition of this work, therefore, is that behavior depends on the image.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human being, on the other hand, is firmly located in a temporal process. He has an image of the past which extends back far beyond the limits of his own life and experience, and he likewise has an image of the future. Closely associated with the time structure of his image is the image of the structure of relationships. Because we are aware of time, we are also aware of cause and effect, of contiguity and succession, of cycles and repetition. The image of man is also characterized by a much greater degree of self-consciousness and of self-awareness than that of the lower animals. We not only know, but we know that we know. This reflective character of the human image is unique, and is what leads to philosophy.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this chapter I want to raise the question partly in jest but partly also in seriousness whether the concept of the image cannot become the abstract foundation of a new science, or at least a cross-disciplinary specialization. As I am indulging in the symbolic communication of an image of images I will even venture to give the science a name — Eiconics — hoping thereby to endow it in the minds of my readers with some of the prestige of classical antiquity. I run some risk perhaps of having my new science confused with the study of icons. A little confusion, however, and the subtle overtones of half-remembered associations are all part of the magic of the name.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert A. Solo (1994) commented: "Curiously, and quite independently of the publication of the The Image, there did occur in the 1950s and in the decades that followed a revolutionary transformation of the social and be…
“The word 'policy' generally refers to the principles that govern action directed towards given ends. Any study of policy therefore should concern itself with three things — what we want (the ends), how we get it (the means), and who are 'we,' that is, what is the nature of the organization or group concerned. Science is concerned with means rather than with ends. The study of "what we want" (objectives) extends beyond the boundaries of the social sciences into the field of ethics. It is not the business of the social sciences to evaluate the ultimate ends of human activity. The social sciences, therefore, cannot give a final answer to the question whether any given policy is right. The social scientist can study what people say they want, what they think they want and may even infer from their behaviour what they really want, but it is not the business of science to say whether people want right things.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An international system consists of a group of interacting behavior units called "nations" or "countries," to which may sometimes be added certain supra-national organizations, such as the United Nations. Each of the behavior units in the system can be described in terms of a set of "relevant variables." Just what is relevant and what is not is a matter of judgment of the system-builder, but we think of such things as states of war or peace, degrees of hostility or friendliness, alliance or enmity, arms budgets, geographic extent, friendly or hostile communications, and so on. Having defined our variables, we can then proceed to postulate certain relationships between them, sufficient to define a path for all the variables through time. Thus we might suppose, with Lewis Richardson that the rate of change of hostility of one nation toward a second depends on the level of hostility in the second and that the rate of change of hostility of the second toward the first depends on the level of hostility of the first. Then, if we start from given levels of hostility in each nation, these equations are sufficient to spell out what happens to these levels in succeeding time periods.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nations are divided into "good"and "bad"-the enemy is all bad, one's own nation is of spotless virtue. Wars are either acts of God or acts of the other nations, which always catch us completely by surprise. To a student of international systems the national image even of respectable, intellectual, and powerful people seems naive and untrue. The patriotism of the sophisticated cannot be a simple faith. There is, however, in the course of human history a powerful and probably irreversible movement toward sophistication. We can wise up, but we cannot wise down, except at enormous cost in the breakdown of civilizations, and not even a major breakdown results in much loss of knowledge.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One demand for a concept of need arises because the concept of demand itself has serious weaknesses and limitations. It assumes away, for instance, a serious epistemological problem. The very idea of autonomous choice implies first that the chooser knows the real alternatives which are open to him, and second that he makes the choice according to value criteria or a utility function which he will not later regret. Both the image of the field of choice and the utility function have a learning problem which, by and large, economists have neglected. This problem is particularly acute in the case of medical care, where the demander is usually a layman faced with professional suppliers who know very much more than he does. The demand for medical care, indeed, is primarily a demand for knowledge or at least the results of knowledge...”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Kenneth Boulding (1967) "The Concept of Need for Health Services" as cited in: Gregory Parston (1980) Planners, Politics, and Health Services. p. 99
“It seems reasonable to suppose that conflict does exhibit many general patterns, that the patterns of conflict in industrial relations, international relations, interpersonal relations, and even animal life are not wholly different from one another, and that it is, therefore, worth looking for the common element. On the other hand, we should be surprised if there were no differences; the pattern of conflict in international relations, for instance, is not the same as in industrial or interpersonal relations. Just as it is important to perceive the similarities in different situations, so it is important to perceive the differences. These differences cannot be perceived, however, without a general theory to serve as a standard of comparison.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 2, partly cited in: Dennis Sandole (1998) A Comprehensive Mapping Of Conflict And Conflict. Resolution: A Three Pillar Approach
“A distinction does not have to be clear to be important, and, at some point, there is a common-sense dividing line between procedural and violent conflict. Violence is most closely associated with conquest as a form of conflict settlement, though violence is descriptive of a conflict process rather than of a conflict settlement. It is quite possible, for instance, for conquest to be nonviolent, that is, for one party to be absorbed in another or for one organization to be dissolved by strictly procedural means. Departments are organized out of existence, countries are federated or united, organizations are laid down, and firms are bankrupted by purely procedural processes, without more than perhaps a trace of legal coercion lurking in the background.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The success of Japanese development is due simply to the fact that Japan devoted a substantial portion of its resources to the growth industry, and particularly to the human resources and then commended Max Weber's emphasis on hard work and thrift. All the law and the prophets of economic development can be summed up in the old proverb that "where there's a will there's a way". The way indeed is absurdly easy and is well known. It consists merely in putting resources into growth. What could be simpler and easier! the problem however, is the will, and this. I think, we understand very little. The whole cultural milieu of society plays a role in the process of developing its will, and it is hard to separate the determining factors. A widespread puritan ethic, as Max Weber pointed out, is undoubtedly an asset, if this leads people to place a high value on hard work and thrift. On the other hand, puritanism often goes along with a resistance to social change and an unwillingness to innovate outside a narrow field of technology, and thrift alone can often lead to uncreative forms of accumulation or even to unemployment and depression. Mere accumulation is not enough. Economic development does not consist merely in the piling up of things, but in the accumulation of new kinds of things.”
Kenneth Boulding (1910–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 116. partly cited in: (2013) "What Boulding Said Went Wrong with Economics, A Quarter Century On