"How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?", The New York Times (September 2, 2009)
The New York Times Columns
“Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.”
The portion after the second semicolon is widely paraphrased or misquoted. Two examples are "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" and "There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
1910s
Source: "The Divine Afflatus" in New York Evening Mail (16 November 1917); later published in Prejudices: Second Series (1920) and A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
Original: Il segreto per risolvere un problema è avere la forza di trovare una soluzione. Quando la soluzione non esiste, la inventi.
Source: prevale.net
“As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”
Source: Foucault's Pendulum
Source: Systems Design of Education (1991), p. 20
Partly cited in: Jean-Marc Choukroun, Roberta Snow (1992) Planning for human systems: essays in honor of Russell L. Ackoff. p. 287.
1950s, The development of operations research as a science, 1956
If we had a certainty about meaning, the suffering would be bearable. With no certainty of meaning, even comfort begins to feel futile.
Source: Frankenstein's Castle (1980), p. 89
Re: "Choose the Right Language" in "Tutorial" by Norvig and Pitman http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/99d41ab4a42978b1 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous
Arrow, Kenneth J., and Gerard Debreu. " Existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cp/p00b/p0087.pdf." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1954): p. 265