I did not throw out my education lightly, but what I was being taught was of no use in explaining what I saw around me. It was the Great Depression.
Interpretation
Education must be relevant to one's experiences and observations.
In this quote, Paul Samuelson reflects on the inadequacy of traditional education during the Great Depression, where he felt that what he was taught did not align with the harsh realities he observed in the world. This illustrates a broader critique of educational systems that may not prepare individuals for real-life challenges, emphasizing the importance of practical and applicable knowledge in any learning process.
In practice
In a graduation speech to emphasize the importance of relevant education.
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.
Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
We need to align the incentives so that colleges have an incentive to keep down their costs... to graduate students on time with degrees in areas where they're going to be able to get jobs and going to be able to pay back those loans.
This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
Children know perfectly well that unicorns arenβt real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.
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