4 Quotes by Robert L. Heilbroner

As long as custom and command ruled the world, the problem of riches and poverty hardly struck the earlier philosophers at all, other than to be accepted with a sigh or railed at as another sign of man's inner worthlessness.

If socialism failed, it was for political, more than economic, reasons; and if capitalism is to succeed it will be because it finds the political will and means to tame its economic forces.

To make the Society Happy... , it is requisite that great numbers should be Ignorant as well as Poor,” wrote Bernard Mandeville, the shrewdest and wickedest social commentator of the early eighteenth century.

Nevertheless these first readings will give us a chance to think about a matter that we would certainly consider to be at the heart of economics – the drive to gain wealth.