We are entitled to be disappointed, but not to be surprised, by the persistence of governmental intervention in economic life. A school of thought at… - George Stigler

Prices instruct us on what people desire, but prices do not tell us why those things are desired. Our desires are accepted as a datum by economists: desires are some amalgam of biological needs, the cultural values of the society in which we grow up, and our own experiments.

The delicate and intricate pattern of competition and cooperation in the economic behavior of the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Stockholm offers a challenge to the economist that is perhaps as complex as the challenges of the physicist and the chemist.

A rational man must be guided by the incentive system within which he operates. No matter what his own personal desires, he must be discouraged from certain activities if they carry penalties and attracted toward others if they carry large rewards. The carrot and the stick guide scientists and politicians as well as donkeys.