Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

-Cather,Willa Sibert
  In Commonweal,17  Apr.

Economics is all about how people make choices. Sociology isall about why theydon't haveanychoicesto make.

-Duesenberry,James Stemble
  In the National Bureau of Economic Research's Demographic and Economic Change in the Developed World.

Economics as a positive science is a body of tentatively accepted generalizations about economic phenomena thatcanbe used topredicttheconsequences ofchanges in circumstances.

-Friedman, Milton
  'The Methodology of Positive Economics' in Essays in Positive Economics.

   The most basic law of economics†that one cannot get something for nothing.

-Harrod, Sir Roy
  Towards a Dynamic Economics.

She is the Enid Blyton of economics.Nothing must be allowed to spoil her simple plots.

-Holme (of Cheltenham), Richard Holme, Baron
  Of Margaret  Thatcher. Speech at the Liberal Party conference,10 Sep.

   For the rational study of the law the blackletter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics.

-Holmes, Oliver Wendell,Jr
  'The Path of the Law', in the Harvard Law Review,10:469.

Economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science.

-Jevons,William Stanley
The Theory of Political Economy.

It is not a correct deduction from the Principles of Economics that enlightened self-interest always operates in the public interest† Experience does not show that individuals when they make up a social unit are always less clear-sighted than when they act separately.

-Keynes (of Tilton),John Maynard, 1st Baron
Essays in Persuasion.

If frequent teabreaks and other manifestations of disguised leisure are regarded as goodsöand economics suggests that they be so regardedötheir inclusion in any index of output per capita might go some way to enhance Britain's comparative performance.

-Mishan, E J
Quoted in  Alex Rubner Three Sacred Cows of Economics (1970), p.47.

Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between scarce resources and ends which have alternative uses† It does not attempt to pick out certain kinds of behaviour, but focusesattentionona particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity.

-Market
  An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, p.16^17.

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

-Robinson, Edwin Arlington
  Quoted in Contributions to Modern Economics (1978), p.75.

Small Is Beautiful: a Study of Economics as if People Mattered.

-Schumacher, E(rnst) F(riedrich)
  Title of book.

The branch of economics dealing with how to enrich a new nation ('economic development' was the title) was actually forbidden by the courts, on the grounds that no university could pay for the damage its teachers did.

-Stigler, GeorgeJoseph
  'The History ofTruth inTeaching', inThe Intellectual and the Marketplace (1984).