Michael

“The laws of economics are to be compared with the laws of the tides, rather than with the simple and exact law of gravitation. For the actions of men are so various and uncertain, that the best statement of tendencies, which we can make in a science of human conduct, must needs be inexact and faulty.”
― Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics

“Management by drive, like management by ‘bellows and meat ax,’ is a sure sign of confusion. It is an admission of incompetence. It is a sign that management does not know how to plan. But, above all, it is a sign that the company does not know what to expect of its managers – that, not knowing how to direct them, it misdirects them.”
― Peter F. Drucker, The Essential Drucker

“What does not yet exist cannot now be known. The future is imagined by each man for himself and this process of the imagination is a vital part of the process of decision. But it does not make the future known. The absolute and eternal difference between the recorded past and the unformed future, despite its overwhelming significance for the very stuff of human existence, has been often overlooked in our economic theories.”
― G.L.S. Shackle, Epistemics and Economics: A Critique of Economic Doctrines

“Economists came along after the existence of the phenomena they try to understand. In other words, economists emerged in a philosophic effort to understand an already existing practice. This point has broad implications for the nature of the discipline, even though we do not usually address then in introductory courses.”
― Peter J. Boettke, Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow