Different constraints are decisive for different situations, but the most fundamental constraint is limited time.

I am saying that the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behaviour

Economy is the art of making the most of life.

Even a wizard would have a great deal of difficulty repealing the economic law that higher minimum wages reduce employment. Since politicians are not wizards, they should not try.

Along with others, I have tried to pry economists away from narrow assumptions about self interest. Behavior is driven by a much richer set of values and preferences.

Still, intuitive assumptions about behavior is only the starting point of systematic analysis, for alone they do not yield many interesting implications.

The most fundamental constraint is limited time

My work on human capital began with an effort to calculate both private and social rates of return to men, women, blacks, and other groups from investments in different levels of education.

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.

The Treatise tries to analyze not only modern Western families, but also those in other cultures and the changes in family structure during the past several centuries.

Why in almost all societies have married women specialized in bearing and rearing children and in certain agricultural activities, whereas married men have done most of the fighting and market work?

You are either born a writer or you are not.

We must, we must, we must increase our bust.

How can anyone trust scientists? If new evidence comes along, they change their minds.

There are many secrets

If a cop sees a person running out of a store with a gun he's seeing a crime. He's not seeing a person standing.

I think Rodney Stark makes a substantial contribution to the study of early Christianity in posing the kinds of questions that he pursues (which reflect his social-science background).

I consider myself more spiritual than religious.

The supply of government exceeds demand.

The gods of one age become the devils of the age to follow. The priests look forward to the age to come and see only the end of the world.

Some deeply untrusting actors - the kind that need to know exactly what's what and are completely insecure - might be quite good within the parameters of a certain sort of acting.