Top 21 Quotes & Sayings by Frank Knight

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American economist Frank Knight.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Frank Hyneman Knight was an American economist who spent most of his career at the University of Chicago, where he became one of the founders of the Chicago School. Nobel laureates Milton Friedman, George Stigler and James M. Buchanan were all students of Knight at Chicago. Ronald Coase said that Knight, without teaching him, was a major influence on his thinking. F.A. Hayek considered Knight to be one of the major figures in preserving and promoting classical liberal thought in the twentieth century. Paul Samuelson named Knight as one of the several "American saints in economics" born after 1860.

American - Economist | November 7, 1885 - April 15, 1972

Source: Wikipedia

In the long run all producers are forced to use the most efficient methods or give place to others who do.

Frank Knight

Goods move in response to price differences from points of low to points of higher price, the movement tending to obliterate the price difference and come to rest.

Frank Knight

The possibility of saying anything about a thing rests on the assumption that it preserves its identity, or continues to be the same thing in the respect described, that it will behave in future situations as it has in past.

Frank Knight

All science is static in the sense that it describes the unchanging aspects of things.

Frank Knight

It is true practically if not altogether without exception that the changes studied by any science tend to equilibrate or neutralize the forces which bring them about, and finally to come to rest.

Frank Knight

We have to adapt and overcome, that's all we can do.

Frank Knight

There is no sense in making statements that will not continue to be true after they are made.

Frank Knight

I have been....moved to wonder whether my job is a job or a racket, whether economists, and particularly economic theorists, may not be in the position that Cicero, citing Cato, ascribed to the augurs of Rome-that they should cover their faces or burst into laugher when they met on the street.

Frank Knight

Large scale collective bargaining . . . is merely a seductive name for bilateral monopoly, and means either adjudication of conflicts in terms of power, or deadlock and stoppage, usually injuring outside people more than the immediate parties to the dispute.

Frank Knight

Always history is being made; opinions attitudes and institutions change, and there is evolution in the nature of capitalism

Frank Knight

Knowledge is more a matter of learning than of the exercise of absolute judgment. Learning requires time, and in time the situation dealt with, as well as the learner, undergoes change.

Frank Knight

Conflicting economic interest is relatively unimportant as a cause of war.

Frank Knight

...even professors of economics, to say nothing of the public, do not generally have scientific minds.

Frank Knight

Costs merely register competing attractions.

Frank Knight

The truth seems . . . to be that in the ultimate and essential problem the economic factor is relatively superficial and unimportant.

Frank Knight

If all properly economic problems were solved once for all . . . the social struggle and strife would . . . [not necessarily] be reduced in amount or intensity . . . in the absence of some moral revolution which could by no means be assumed to follow in consequence of this change itself.

Frank Knight

Never waste any time you can spend sleeping.

Frank Knight

The probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master in a slave plantation.

Frank Knight

Market competition is the only form of organization which can afford a large measure of freedom to the individual.

Frank Knight