If ordinary citizens knew or ever really [understood] how…

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

— Mark Zandi

Economists think about what people ought to do. Psychologists watch what they actually do.

— Daniel Kahneman

It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It…

— Henry Hazlitt

As economists bandy about terms like 'recapitalization,' 'credit lines,' and 'liquidity,' families are facing brutal cuts to their social services and welfare payments, losing…

— Sharan Burrow

Losses of a kind of satisfaction that have no market equivalent don't show up in the calculations of economists.

— Ivan Illich

Economists must always be prepared for surprises: they find many in trying to find order in the universe of their study.

— Simon Kuznets

I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.

— William Gilmore Simms

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use…

— Barry Ritholtz

Economists actually disagree about whether there are significant economic returns from attending an elite college versus a less-selective one.

— Emily Oster

I have always been considered to be the most German among Italian economists, which I always received as a compliment, but was rarely meant…

— Mario Monti

When economists speak of money, they neglect that all money and credit is debt. That is the essence of bookkeeping and accounting. There are…

— Michael Hudson

In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to…

— Robert Gilpin

There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world…

— Thomas Piketty

Gambling interests hire lots of economists to do impact studies, but what you need is cost-benefit analysis, and you'll never see the industry finance…

— John Warren Kindt

“Economists who simply advised leaving the economy alone, governments whose first instincts, apart from protecting the gold standard by deflationary policies, was to stick…

— Eric J. Hobsbawm