“I think Marshall was a great economist, but he was a potentially much greater economist than he actually was. It was not that he was lazy, but his health was not good, and he worked in miniature.”

— Paul A. Samuelson

Kotaro Suzumura, An interview with Paul Samuelson: welfare economics,“old” and “new”, and social choice theory (2005)
New millennium

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I think Marshall was a great economist, but he was a potentially much greater economist than he actually was. It was no…" by Paul A. Samuelson?

Paul A. Samuelson47

American economist 1915–2009

Related quotes

“I had a great admiration for Pigou. I thought that, in many ways, he was not only a faithful follower of Alfred Marshall, but he was also a more fertile developer of the Marshallian tradition than Marshall himself. … Whitehead said to me:“Don’t you think that Pigou was an overrated economist? Wasn’t Foxwell a better man?” Since I am an honest man, I said to Whitehead:“No, I think Pigou was a much more important economist than Foxwell.””

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Kotaro Suzumura, An interview with Paul Samuelson: welfare economics,“old” and “new”, and social choice theory (2005)
New millennium

“It is not enough for the economist in a free society to be a good economic craftsman; he must also think and act as a citizen.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, An Economist Looks At the Peace (1945)

“It’s a tribute to the importance of Friedman’s work that questions about his legacy bear so directly on contemporary policy issues. But for that reason it’s also important not to engage in hagiography. Friedman was a great economist, but like every other great economist in history, he was also wrong about some important things.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Response to Nelson and Schwartz, Journal of Monetary Economics 55 (2008)

“He has a lot of ability. The team depends on him. He is a star. He is going to emerge as an all-time great in the future. I see that much potential in him. It is very difficult to spot his weakness. He plays on both sides of the wicket. He plays both on the front and the back foot. He has a good temperament, technique.”

Virat Kohli (1988) Indian cricket player

Showering praise on India's star batsman Virat Kohli, legendary cricketer Imran Khan said he had the potential to emerge as an all-time great, quoted on ibnlive, "Virat Kohli has the potential to emerge as all-time great: Imran Khan" http://www.ibnlive.com/cricketnext/news/virat-kohli-has-the-potential-to-emerge-as-all-time-great-imran-khan-1218529.html, March 19, 2016. <br class="br">About him

“In spite of assigning little influence of economists' preachings on actual public policy, I do not believe that economists' influence is negligible. The reconciliation of these views lies in the fact that economists are scientists as well as preachers. Our science seeks to understand how economic institutions and economic systems work, and no informed person can deny that we have made much progress in this work.”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

"The Effect of Government on Economic Efficiency." 1988

“The ability to work with systems of general equilibrium is perhaps one of the most important skills of the economist — a skill which he shares with many other scientists, but in which he has perhaps a certain comparative advantage.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 15

“What’s odd about Friedman’s absolutism on the virtues of markets and the vices of government is that in his work as an economist’s economist he was actually a model of restraint. As I pointed out earlier, he made great contributions to economic theory by emphasizing the role of individual rationality—but unlike some of his colleagues, he knew where to stop. Why didn’t he exhibit the same restraint in his role as a public intellectual?
The answer, I suspect, is that he got caught up in an essentially political role. Milton Friedman the great economist could and did acknowledge ambiguity. But Milton Friedman the great champion of free markets was expected to preach the true faith, not give voice to doubts. And he ended up playing the role his followers expected. As a result, over time the refreshing iconoclasm of his early career hardened into a rigid defense of what had become the new orthodoxy.
In the long run, great men are remembered for their strengths, not their weaknesses, and Milton Friedman was a very great man indeed—a man of intellectual courage who was one of the most important economic thinkers of all time, and possibly the most brilliant communicator of economic ideas to the general public that ever lived. But there’s a good case for arguing that Friedmanism, in the end, went too far, both as a doctrine and in its practical applications. When Friedman was beginning his career as a public intellectual, the times were ripe for a counterreformation against Keynesianism and all that went with it. But what the world needs now, I’d argue, is a counter-counterreformation.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Who Was Milton Friedman?", The New York Review of Books (February 15, 2007)
The New York Review of Books articles