“In contrast to Smith’s incomplete modeling, his follower, David Ricardo, provides a coherent setting— basically, the first macroeconomic model—that can be tested, modified, and applied. Although Ricardo is surely narrower and less imaginative and insightful than Smith, he is also a lot better organized. That is why Ricardo’s analysis of macroeconomics—for example, of the implications of public debt—is more coherent and useful than Smith’s.”

— Robert Barro

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 10

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Robert Barro 18

American classical macroeconomist 1944

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“Adam Smith and Malthus and Ricardo! There is something about these three figures to evoke more than ordinary sentiments from us their children in the spirit.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Robert Malthus: The First of the Cambridge Economists, p. 148

“Ricardo, writing fifty years later than Smith, showed a greater insight into the working of the economic system; but as for the subtlety (whatever demerit there may be in that!) the Scot does not lose by comparison with the Jew.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter IV, The Classical System, p. 176

“Ricardo's "science" was founded on the principle that capital is more or less immobile and labor highly mobile. We are enjoined today to worship the consequences of Ricardo's science, despite the fact that the assumptions on which they are based have been reversed: capital is highly mobile, and labor virtually immobile -- libertarian conservatives lead the way in rejecting Adam Smith's principle that "free circulation of labor" is a cornerstone of free trade, in keeping with their contempt for markets”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

except for the weak
Z Magazine, February 1995 http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199505--.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

“The technological concepts of Technocracy are completely beyond any of the political and social philosophies, from Adam Smith, Ricardo, Proudhon, Bakunin, Karl Marx, Lenin and various other promulgators of rightist and leftist political philosophies.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Source: History and Purpose of Technocracy, 1965, p. 23

“The phrase laissez-faire is not to be found in the works of Adam Smith, of Ricardo, or of Malthus. Even the idea is not present in a dogmatic form in any of these authors. Adam Smith, of course, was a Free Trader and an opponent of many eighteenth-century restrictions on trade. But his attitude towards the Navigation Acts and the usury laws shows that he was not dogmatic. Even his famous passage about 'the invisible hand' reflects the philosophy which we associate with Paley rather than the economic dogma of laissez-faire.”

John Maynard Keynes book Essays in Persuasion

Source: Essays in Persuasion (1931), The End of Laissez-faire (1926), Ch. 2

“Economics has always flourished and acquired energy from controversies generated by practical policy questions of the day. That was true in the times of Smith, and Ricardo, and Keynes, and it is true today. These periods of division and revolution and counterrevolution are generally followed by periods of synthesis and consolidation from which the science emerges stronger. i am optimistic that this will happen again, and that the best of the insights of the new clasicals will be absorbed in a mainstream, in which the essential insights of Keynesian economists also survive.”

James Tobin (1918–2002) American economist

James Tobin, in Conversations with Economists (1983) by Arjo Klamer
1970s and later

“We owe nothing in our origins from Adam Smith, Ricardo, Pareto, Proudhon, Bakunin, Karl Marx, Lenin, or any of the rest of the political philosophies. We do owe a debt to J. Willard Gibbs, Nikola Tesla, Steinmetz, Mac and John Rusk, and a thousand other American chemists, engineers, scientists, and technologists.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Howard Scott interviewed at Radio station KYW, Cleveland Interview with Howard Scott, 19 November 1964. Transcript online at technocracyincorporated.org, 2006.

“A very useful book might be written with the sole object of advising what parts of what books should be read. It should not be a book of elegant extracts, but should merely refer to the passages which are advised to be read. It might also indicate what are the chief works upon any given subject. For example, take rent; the important passages in Adam Smith, Ricardo, Jones, Mill, and other writers, should be referred to.”

Arthur Helps (1813–1875) British writer

Source: Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms. (1871), p. 37

“For such fields deep historical studies can have considerable contemporary relevance and hence fall within the boundaries of the field itself. Weber and Durkheim are still studied by sociologists, just as Adam Smith and Ricardo are still studied by economists, whereas Galilean and Newtonian studies are not part of physics but of an altogether different discipline, the history of science.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "Does the history of psychology have a future?." 1994, p. 472

“Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach,
And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech,
Because suppose you eschew gossip and just say
Mr. Smith is in love with his wife.
Why that disposes the Smiths as a topic of conversation for the rest of their life,
But suppose you say with a smile, that poor little Mrs. Smith thinks her husband is in love with her, he must be very clever,
Why then you can enjoyably talk about the Smiths forever.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938), I Have It On Good Authority

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