[The loss- of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base. - Kenneth E. Boulding

We have defined the main task of economic analysis as the explanation of the magnitudes of economic quantities. The student will find also that the main part of this, as of most other works on the subject, is concerned with the theory of the determination of prices, wages, interest rates, incomes, and the like. He may well inquire, therefore, in the midst of so much mathematics, whether the first task of economics is not the investigation of wealth, or welfare. Some economists have endeavored to restrict the boundaries of the science to the investigation of those quantities which are numerically measurable. Well-being, under such a restriction, would not be part of economics at all.

[The historical] development in the international system may almost be defined as the process by which we pass from stable war to stable peace.

[The law of evolution states that] complexity increases in terms of differentiation and structure.