Reasonable men are not reasonable when you're in the bubbles which have characterized capitalism since the beginning of time. Paul Samuelson More Quotes by Paul Samuelson More Quotes From Paul Samuelson Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. Paul Samuelson vegassavingmoney I'm not sure most of the people that get caught up in the middle of a bubble can be described as irrational. It seems pretty rational to buy a house and flip it in the next few weeks at a profit when that's been happening for along time. Paul Samuelson nexthousepeople An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed. Paul Samuelson intriguingmaterialismgreed Companies are not charitable enterprises: They hire workers to make profits. In the United States, this logic still works. In Europe, it hardly does. Paul Samuelson united-statesdoeeurope Funeral by funeral, theory advances. Paul Samuelson funeraltheory Mea culpa, mea culpa. MIT and Wharton and University of Chicago created the financial engineering instruments, which, like Samson and Delilah, blinded every CEO. They didn't realize the kind of leverage they were doing and they didn't understand when they were really creating a real profit or a fictitious one. Paul Samuelson engineeringcreatingreal Second, they [those who disagree with market efficiency] always claim they know a man, a bank, or a fund that does do better. Alas, anecdotes are not science. And once Wharton School dissertations seek to quantify the performers, these have a tendency to evaporate into the air - or, at least, into statistically insignificant t-statistics. Paul Samuelson airmenschool This message (that attempting to beat the market is futile) can never be sold on Wall Street because it is in effect telling stock analysts to drop dead. Paul Samuelson analystswallmessages The sad truth is that it is precisely those who disagree most with the hypothesis of efficient market pricing of stocks, those who pooh-pooh beta analysis and all that, who are least able to understand the analysis needed to test that hypothesis. Paul Samuelson investingtestsable When the economy was going up, [Milton Friedman and I] both gave the same advice, and when the economy was going down, we gave the same advice. But in between he didn't change his advice at all. Paul Samuelson miltoneconomyadvice What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth. Paul Samuelson growthpowerfuldoubt Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago. Paul Samuelson economisteconomicsyears What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job? Paul Samuelson black-youthdoejobs It is not easy to get rich in Las Vegas, at Churchill Downs, or at the local Merrill Lynch office. Paul Samuelson vegasrichoffice We are like highly trained athletes, who never run a race. Paul Samuelson athleterunningpast The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done. Paul Samuelson decisionusekings It isn't that greed's increased. What's increased is the realization that you've got a free field to reach out for what you'd like to do. Paul Samuelson greedfieldsrealization The growth of a nation's productive potential is the central factor in determining its growth in real wages and living standards.... high rates of investment and saving usually have a big payoff in promoting economic growth. Paul Samuelson politicalrealphilosophy I couldn't reconcile what I was being taught at the university of Chicago, the lectures and the books I was being assigned, with what I knew to be true out in the streets. Paul Samuelson taughtchicagobook We're a me-me-me generation. We're borrowing the savings of every nation in the world. We're ... piling up a big tab. Now, I may think we're too big to have a run on us. You may think that. But it's possible that God does not. Paul Samuelson doerunningthinking
