In the 1950s, I proposed the survivor method of determining the efficient sizes of enterprises, and worked on delivered price systems, vertical integration, and similar topics.

...it is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it.

I attended schools in Seattle through the University of Washington, from which I was graduated in 1931. I spent the next year at Northwestern University.

The main insight learned from interdisciplinary studies is the return to specialization

Competition is a tough weed, not a delicate flower.

There is only one social science and we are its practitioners

If you never miss a plane, you’re spending too much time at the airport.

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.

I recall my mother asking in about 1946 what I was and I replied proudly that I was a professor. A decade later she repeated her question and I repeated my answer. "No promotion?" was her comment.

Theories are not rejected by cirsumstantial evidence: it takes a theory to beat a theory.

It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation.

It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.

I'm dumping the whole box back into your life Ed, every item of you and me. I'm dumping this box on your porch, Ed, but it's you, Ed, who is getting dumped.

I place solitude in a frame on my desk and call it, the one I love.

There are but two ways of rising in the world: either by one's own industry or profiting by the foolishness of others.

Economics departments are dominated by Marxism, which is taken straight or on the rocks, in the form of Keynesianism.

My wife went into the butchers and said: "You've a sheep's head in your window." The butcher said: "That's a mirror."

I'm not the kind of actor that gets crazy with [directors'] names, what draws me toward a project is the material itself.

I'm not interested in becoming a bigger star, I'm not interested in being the wealthiest guy in the world. I'm doing fine, I love acting, and I want to do it for the rest of my life.

I guess I usually write when I'm in a really intense headspace, because it's my form of self-therapy.

After seeing kids play polo against big guys, it only shows that horses are the greatest equalizer in the world. No matter what you weigh, the little fellow is your equal on a horse.