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.