“It is from the scope and wisdom of the economists of the past that we must reap the knowledge with which to face the future.”

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter XI, Beyond the Economic Revolution, p. 317

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 "It is from the scope and wisdom of the economists of the past that we must reap the knowledge with which to face the fu…" by Robert L. Heilbroner?
Robert L. Heilbroner photo
Robert L. Heilbroner 39
American historian and economist 1919–2005

Related quotes

Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: Tomorrow Is Now (1963), p. xv
Context: We face the future fortified with the lessons we have learned from the past. It is today that we must create the world of the future. Spinoza, I think, pointed out that we ourselves can make experience valuable when, by imagination and reason, we turn it into foresight.

Arthur C. Clarke photo

“The future is built on the rubble of the past; wisdom lies in facing that fact, not in fighting against it.”

The Road to the Sea, p. 265
2000s and posthumous publications, The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (2001)

Malcolm X photo

“Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can with confidence charter a course for our future. Culture is an indispensable weapon in the freedom struggle. We must take hold of it and forge the future with the past.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Speech at Founding Rally of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (28 June 1964), as quoted in By Any Means Necessary (1970)
By Any Means Necessary (1970)

Dennis Gabor photo

“Incomplete knowledge of the future, and also of the past of the transmitter from which the future might be constructed, is at the very basis of the concept of information.”

Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography

"Optical transmission" in Information Theory : Papers Read at a Symposium on Information Theory (1952), as cited in Living Systems (1978) by James Grier Miller, p. 12
Context: Incomplete knowledge of the future, and also of the past of the transmitter from which the future might be constructed, is at the very basis of the concept of information. On the other hand, complete ignorance also precludes communication; a common language is required, that is to say an agreement between the transmitter and the receiver regarding the elements used in the communication process...
[The information of a message can] be defined as the 'minimum number of binary decisions which enable the receiver to construct the message, on the basis of the data already available to him.' These data comprise both the convention regarding the symbols and the language used, and the knowledge available at the moment when the message started.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward cross the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Zurich University (September 19, 1946) ( partial text http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/astonish.html) ( http://www.peshawar.ch/varia/winston.htm).
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Timothy Dwight IV photo

“What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!”

Timothy Dwight IV (1752–1817) American historian

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 275.

Claude Elwood Shannon photo

“Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.”

Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) American mathematician and information theorist

Coding theorems for a discrete source with a fidelity criterion. IRE International Convention Records, volume 7, pp. 142--163, 1959.
Context: This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it.

Related topics