Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless. Kenneth E. Boulding More Quotes by Kenneth E. Boulding More Quotes From Kenneth E. Boulding Know this: though love is weak and hate is strong, Yet hate is short, and love is very long. Kenneth E. Boulding hatestronglove-is The proposition that the meek (that is the adaptable and serviceable), inherit the earth is not merely a wishful sentiment of religion, but an iron law of evolution. Kenneth E. Boulding ironlawscience DNA has been aptly described as the first three-dimensional Xerox machine. Kenneth E. Boulding technologydnascience The social system tends to be dominated by images... especially of the future, which act cybernetically, constantly guided by perceived divergences between the real and the ideal. Kenneth E. Boulding idealsrealsocial Nothing fails like success, because we do not learn anything from it. We only learn from failure, but we do not always learn the right things from failure. If there is a failure of expectations, that is, if the messages that we receive are not the same as those we expected, we can make three possible inferences. Kenneth E. Boulding threemessagesexpectations The concept of a value-free science is absurd. Kenneth E. Boulding conceptsabsurdvalues Knowledge exists in minds, not in books. Before what has been found can be used by practitioners, someone must organize it, integrate it, extract the message. Kenneth E. Boulding messagesmindbook Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits. Kenneth E. Boulding witscientistsocial The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible. Kenneth E. Boulding fundamentalsphilosophyfacts The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market... the higher the black market price. Kenneth E. Boulding penaltieshigherblack The organizer who creates roles, who creates the holes that will force the pegs to their shape, is a prime creator of personality itself. When we ask of a man, "What is he?" the answer is usually given in terms of his major role, job, or position in society; he is the place that he fills, a painter, a priest, a politician, a criminal. Kenneth E. Boulding personalityjobsmen The ability to work with systems of general equilibrium is perhaps one of the most important skills of the economist - a skill which he shares with many other scientists, but in which he has perhaps a certain comparative advantage. Kenneth E. Boulding scientistskillsimportant It is clear that the building of models is not a purely mechanical process but requires skill of a high order - not merely mathematical skill but a sensitivity to the relative importance of different factors and a critical, almost an artistic, faculty in the selection of behaviour equations which are reasonable, tentative hypotheses in explaining the behaviour of actual economies. Kenneth E. Boulding differentskillsorder No science of any kind can be divorced from ethical considerations... Science is a human learning process which arises in certain subcultures in human society and not in others, and a subculture as we seen is a group of people defined by acceptance of certain common values, that is, an ethic which permits extensive communication between them. Kenneth E. Boulding communicationacceptancepeople It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is. Kenneth E. Boulding incomepatternsmight The concept of need is often looked upon rather unfavorably by economists, in contrast with the concept of demand. Both, however, have their own strengths and weaknesses. The need concept is criticized as being too mechanical, as denying the autonomy and individuality of the human person, and as implying that the human being is a machine which "needs" fuel in the shape of food, engine dope in the shape of medicine, and spare parts provided by the surgeon. Kenneth E. Boulding dopemedicineindividuality The trouble with taxonomic boxes is... that that they tend to be empty, however beautiful they are on the outside. Kenneth E. Boulding emptytroublebeautiful [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 E. Boulding communitymatteropposites Production functions involving only land, labor and capital... never work and never explain economic development. Kenneth E. Boulding economicdevelopmentland In calling society an ecological system we are not merely using an analogy; society is an example of the general concept of an "ecosystem" that is, an ecological system of which biological systems - forests, fields, swamps - are other examples. Kenneth E. Boulding ecosystemsexamplecalling
