24 Quotes by Robert Solow

Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to me that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing I want to do with him is to get involved in a technical discussion of cavalry tactics at the Battle of Austerlitz. If I do that, I'm getting tacitly drawn into the game that he is Napoleon Bonaparte.

The user of land should not be allowed to acquire rights of indefinite duration for single payments. For efficiency, for adequate revenue and for justice, every user of land should be required to make an annual payment to the local government equal to the current rental value of the land that he or she prevents others from using.

Why does a public discussion of economic policy so often show the abysmal ignorance of the participants?

The world can, in effect, get along without natural resources, so exhaustion is just an event, not a catastrophe.

I remember once reading that it is still not understood how the giraffe manages to pump an adequate blood supply all the way up to its head; but it is hard to imagine that anyone would conclude tht giraffes do not have long necks. At least not anyone who had ever been to a zoo

But part of the job of economics is weeding out errors. That is much harder than making them, but also more fun.

The fact that there is no such thing as a perfect anti-sepsis does not mean that one might as well do brain surgery in a sewer.

Computers show up everywhere except the growth statistics.

Everything reminds Milton Friedman of the money supply. Everything reminds me of sex, but I try to keep it out of my papers.