Benjamin M. Friedman > Quotes

“Scientific thought is a development of pre-scientific thought. —Albert Einstein”
― Benjamin M. Friedman, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

“creation”
― Benjamin M. Friedman, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

“These further, secular implications were in turn closely aligned with the key elements of the new thinking that in time produced the Smithian revolution in economics and then shaped the evolution of modern economics ever since. To be sure, recognizing the logical connection between ideas, or even sets of ideas, is not the same as establishing historical influence.89 But not only did the transition in thinking that set the foundation for modern economics closely follow the movement away from orthodox Calvinism in time, the two shared a logical coherence as well. To a large extent, in their thinking about both philosophy and what we now call economics, Smith and his contemporaries were secularizing the essential substance of their clerical friends’ theological principles.90”
― Benjamin M. Friedman, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

“My argument is most certainly not that these were religiously dedicated men who self-consciously brought their theological commitments to bear on their economic thinking. Rather, the creators of modern economics lived at a time when religion was both more pervasive and more central than anything we know in today’s Western world.”
― Benjamin M. Friedman, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

“God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone and in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory.”
― Benjamin M. Friedman, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism