Kenneth E. Boulding Quotes

Economists and technologists bring the "bits", but it requires the social scientists and humanists to bring the "wits."

The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism.

The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state.

Production functions involving only land, labor and capital... never work and never explain economic development.

[The integrative system] deals with such matters as respect, legitimacy, community, friendship, affection, love, and of course their opposites, across a broad scale of human relationships and interactions.

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one‟s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover...

[Peace praxis is] a peace process that deals with conflict integratively.

The most fundamental form of integrative power is the power of love.

Integrative power [is] the ultimate power

We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.

...the perception of potential threats to survival may be much more important in determining behavior than the perceptions of potential profits, so that profit maximization is not really the driving force. It is fear of loss rather than hope of gain that limits our behavior

Prediction of the future is possible only in systems that have stable parameters like celestial mechanics. The only reason why prediction is so successful in celestial mechanics is that the evolution of the solar system has ground to a halt in what is essentially a dynamic equilibrium with stable parameters. Evolutionary systems, however, by their very nature have unstable parameters. They are disequilibrium systems and in such systems our power of prediction, though not zero, is very limited because of the unpredictability of the parameters themselves. If, of course, it were possible to predict the change in the parameters, then there would be other parameters which were unchanged, but the search for ultimately stable parameters in evolutionary systems is futile, for they probably do not exist... Social systems have Heisenberg principles all over the place, for we cannot predict the future without changing it.

It is much more accurate to identify the factors of production as know-how (that is genetic information structure), energy, and materials, for, as we have seen, all processes of production involve the direction of energy by some know-how structure toward the selection, transportation, and transformation of materials into the product

We cannot walk befor we toddle,
Though we may toddle far too long,
If we embrace a lovely Model
That is consistent, clear, and wrong.
- Experts from "Notes from Wooods Hole", unpublished, 1976.

In modern industry, research Has come to be a kind of Church
Where rubber-aproned acolytes
Perform their Scientific Rites
And firms spend funds they do not hafter
In hope of benefits Hereafter.