Kenneth E. Boulding

All knowledge is gained through an orderly loss of information.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Humble, honest, ignorance is one of the finest flowers of the human spirit

— Kenneth E. Boulding

A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

One reason why the progressive state is 'cheerful' is that social conflict is diminished by it.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

In any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Economists are like computers. They need to have facts punched into them.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Economics, we learn in the history of thought, only became a science by escaping from the casuistry and moralizing of medieval thought.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

It is absurd to suppose we can think of nature as a system apart from knowledge, for it is knowledge that is…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

[The loss-of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The organization of science into disciplines sets up a series of ghettos with remarkable distances of artificial social space between them.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

I have been gradually coming under the conviction, disturbing for a professional theorist, that there is no such thing as economics -…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

If a totally new image is to come into being however, there must be sensitivity to internal messages, the image itself must…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Even personal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Physicists only talk to physicists, economists to economists-worse still, nuclear physicists only talk to nuclear physicists and econometricians to econometricians. One wonders…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Perhaps the most difficult ethical problem of the scientific community arises not so much from conflict with other subcultures as from its…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

[In science any model depends on a pre-chosen taxonomy] a set of classifications into which we divide the enormous complexity of the…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ...…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

One of the most important skills of the economist, therefore, is that of simplification of the model. Two important methods of simplification…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The concept of need is often looked upon rather unfavorably by economists, in contrast with the concept of demand. Both, however, have…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The social dynamics of human history, even more than that of biological evolution, illustrate the fundamental principle of ecological evolution - that…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The troubles of the 20th century are not unlike those of adolescence -- rapid growth beyond the ability of organizations to manage,…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Economic progress means the discovery and application of better ways of doing things to satisfy our wants. The piping of water to…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

General Systems Theory is a name which has come into use to describe a level of theoretical model-building which lies somewhere between…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

There is no such thing as economics, only social science applied to economic problems.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The process of consumption is the final act in the economic drama.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market... the higher the black market price.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

[The historical] development in the international system may almost be defined as the process by which we pass from stable war to…

— Kenneth E. Boulding

With laissez-faire and price atomic, Ecology's Uneconomic, But with another kind of logic Economy's Unecologic.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Accounting for the most part, remains a legalistic and traditional practice, almost immune to self-criticism by scientific methods.

— Kenneth E. Boulding

We never like to admit to ourselves that we have made a mistake. Organizational structures tend to accentuate this source of failure…

— Kenneth E. Boulding