I don't care who writes a nation's laws - or crafts its advanced treaties - if I can write its economics textbooks.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of economic education in shaping a society's values and decisions, more than political laws or treaties.
In this quote, Paul Samuelson highlights the profound impact of education, particularly in economics, on a nation's structure and future. He suggests that the way people understand and engage with economic concepts can influence their actions and beliefs more than the laws and treaties that govern them. By stating that he doesn't care about who writes laws, he implies that knowledge and education in economics are foundational to everything else in society.
In practice
In a speech addressing a community college graduation, one could use this quote to stress the importance of education in shaping future leaders.
To a person of analytical ability, perceptive enough to realise that mathematical equipment was a powerful sword in economics, the world of economics was his or her oyster in 1935. The terrain was strewn with beautiful theorems begging to be picked up and arranged in unified order.
I can't think of a president who has been overburdened by a knowledge of economics.
My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.
Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.
My family was well off but not rich. I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a hundred different employers and wouldn't get a nibble. That was a disequilibrium system. I realized that the ordinary old-fashioned Euclidean geometry didn't apply.
Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
I like books that aren't just lovely but that have memories in themselves. Just like playing a song, picking up a book again that has memories can take you back to another place or another time.
The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a [student] of the pleasure and benefit of discovery.
The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something undeferring about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic.
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
The Indians seemed to be living in a place and in a way that was of immense importance to me. So I associate learning to read - English, oddly enough - with wanting to know about Indians. I'm still growing into it. I've never outgrown that.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
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