Economists often like startling theorems results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.

You and I come by road or rail but economists travel on infrastructure.

In the fourth grade my history teacher gave us a project: Why was the auto industry located in Detroit Michigan? I didn't know I was going to be an economist but I knew I was going to do something that was involved in answering questions like that one because I thought that was a fascinating question.

If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming mass manufacturing things like that. The problem is our society is not organized around doing that.

Is human nature basically good or evil? No economist can embark upon his profession without considering this question and yet they all seem to. And they all seem to think human nature is basically good or they wouldn't be surprised by the effects of deregulation.

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

With more than 67 percent of the Nation's freight moving on highways economists believe that our ability to compete internationally is tied to the quality of our infrastructure.

I am looking forward to learning at the knee of Paul Ryan. He doesn't strike me as a politician. He strikes me as an economist.

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

Health economists have estimated that an injection of $250 million per year in Indigenous clinical care and $50 million in preventative care is required to provide services at the same level as for any other group with the health conditions of Indigenous Australians.

Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society.

The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs ' like the health effects of air and water pollution.

With respect to the first of these obstacles it has often been made a matter of grave complaint against Political Economists that they confine their attention to Wealth and disregard all consideration of Happiness or Virtue.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man's lifetime income - which he then spends sending his son to college.

I don't imagine Heads of Government would ever be able to say I'm not an economist therefore I can't take decisions on matters of the economy I'm not a soldier I can't take decisions on matters of defence I'm not an educationist so I can't take decisions about education.

No real English gentleman in his secret soul was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

There is the expression of selfishness and there is the expression of selflessness - but economists or theoreticians never touched that part. They said: 'Go and become a philanthropist.' I said 'No I can do that in the business world create a different kind of business - a business based on selflessness.'

I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.

Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.

If all the economists were laid end to end they'd never reach a conclusion.