“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. Now, Bob Lucas and Tom Sargent like nothing better than to get drawn into technical discussions, because then you have tacitly gone along with their fundamental assumptions; your attention is attracted away from the basic weakness of the whole story. Since I find that fundamental framework ludicrous, I respond by treating it as ludicrous – that is, by laughing at it – so as not to fall into the trap of taking it seriously and passing on to matters of technique.”
Quoted in Conversations with Economists (1983) by Arjo Klamer, p. 146
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Robert Solow 8
American economist 1924Related quotes
May 2007, http://www.sundaysun.co.uk/sport/north-east-football/2007/05/29/derby-county-1-west-brom-0-79310-19213006/
Billy made these remarks shortly after gaining promotion to the Premiership with Derby County
You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination.
Essay, "Writing as a practice". p.11
Writing Down the Bones (1986)
"The Battle of Waterloo", reported in Oliver Ernesto Branch, ed., The Hamilton Speaker (1878), p. 53
Prime Minister's monthly press conference http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page5691.asp, 22 April 2004.
2000s
Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
She & Him : Volume One (2008)
As quoted in The Federal Career Service: A Look Ahead (1954)
1950s
Variant: Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.
“I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon--down here everybody thinks he's Christ.”
Source: Tender Is the Night