Let those who will write the nation's laws, if I can write its textbooks.
Interpretation
Education shapes the future by influencing the laws and norms of society.
In this quote, Paul Samuelson emphasizes the profound impact that education has on society. He suggests that while laws dictate behavior, it is the educational materials that shape people's beliefs, values, and understanding of the world. By controlling the content of textbooks, one can indirectly influence the direction of a nation, as educated citizens are more likely to shape and uphold laws based on their understanding derived from education.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of curriculum design in schools.
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.
Math research is more like a marathon.
I've been at this for 40 years. And, as an academic, I've been content with relatively small audiences, with the thought that the audience I long for will find its way eventually to what I have written, provided that what I have written is good enough.
The method of instruction in Scouting is that of creating in the boy the desire to learn for himself.
Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.
The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.
My childhood was surrounded by books and writing. From a very early age I was fascinated by storytelling, by the printed word, by language, by ideas. So I would seek them out.
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