Gunnar Myrdal

As a forecaster, Marx shared the common destiny of all prophets: to be belied by events.

— Gunnar Myrdal

In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost…

— Gunnar Myrdal

The short-term international capital market is shrunken and erratic, and cannot be relied upon to cushion the effects of tendencies to disequilibrium…

— Gunnar Myrdal

So many social changes are as irreversible as the reaction when sodium is thrown into water.

— Gunnar Myrdal

Language, as we know, is full of illogicalities.

— Gunnar Myrdal

All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural…

— Gunnar Myrdal

America has had gifted conservative statesmen and national leaders. But with few exceptions, only the liberals have gone down in history as…

— Gunnar Myrdal

The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well-off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest…

— Gunnar Myrdal

It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law…

— Gunnar Myrdal

Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be…

— Gunnar Myrdal

America is conservative in fundamental principles... but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical.

— Gunnar Myrdal

It is no accident that the Victorian age, the heyday of conventionalism, was the cultural bloom of economic liberalism.

— Gunnar Myrdal

Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by Governments lacking courage and vision.

— Gunnar Myrdal

It Is in the Agricultural Sector That the Battle for Long- Term Economic Development Will Be Won or Lost.

— Gunnar Myrdal

Social taboos are shy like virtue; once lost, there is no remedy

— Gunnar Myrdal

The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes ... in…

— Gunnar Myrdal

Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.

— Gunnar Myrdal

Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually…

— Gunnar Myrdal

In the United States, and to only slightly lesser degree in all the other rich and economically progressive Western countries, public debate…

— Gunnar Myrdal

People become less inhibited from wanting to change social and economic conditions in a radical fashion according to their own interests, and…

— Gunnar Myrdal

There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down…

— Gunnar Myrdal

Education has in America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society.

— Gunnar Myrdal

Planned parenthood" in the social history of the Western countries is, indeed, a phenomenon instrin-sically related to those very changes in peoples…

— Gunnar Myrdal