I was supposed to list down all the quotes I liked from the book individually, but then I realized that it would take a lot of blog entries, so I just decided to put them all together.
There’s no limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.
It’s not enough to want to make the world a better place and it isn’t enough to do something that looks like it makes the world a better place. The goal is to actually make the world a better place. And that is often a lot harder than it looks.
Never confuse a person’s identity or value as a human being with her job title. They have nothing to do with each other.
Economics is not about prices and money. Economics is about how to get the most out of life. That’s why I tell my students not to take the job that pays the most money. You should take the job that is most rewarding, where the rewards are monetary and nonmonetary. And to get the most out of life, you have to pay attention to costs and benefits.
The poorer countries are more likely to have concentrated economic interests that fight any changes that might bring competition.
Ruth’s favorite metaphor for investment was the planting of a seed. A planted seed has value long before it becomes a tree. The potential benefits are enough to give it value. Teaching is the planting of seeds. Knowledge, or even better, wisdom, is an investment like a tree that goes on and on producing fruit. But unlike a fruit tree, you have no idea when the fruit will come or what kind it will be.
…How when you’re twenty-two you think, no, you know you’re the center of the universe. Until you get a little older and you find out it’s not quite true. Is there any lesson more important to fully understand, if you want to be a grown-up?
