“Whatever form it takes, the possession of the imaginative gift transforms the problem of accounting for human conduct. For now it is not a question of how given needs are satisfied. Deliberative conduct, choice, the prime economic act, depend for their possibility, when they go beyond pure instinctive animal response to stimulus, upon the conceptual power of the human mind. Choice is necessarily amongst thoughts, amongst things imagined.”

—  G. L. S. Shackle

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 130

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G. L. S. Shackle photo
G. L. S. Shackle8
British economist 1903–1992

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