A Quote by Ronald Coase
If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, "what would I do if I were a horse?"
Related Quotes
Economics, over the years, has become more and more abstract and divorced from events in the real world. Economists, by and large, do not study the workings of the actual economic system. They theorize about it. As Ely Devons, an English economist, once said in a meeting: 'If economists wanted to study the horse, they wouldn't go around and look at horses. They'd sit in their studies and say to themselves, `What would I do if I were a horse?' '
Some guys make their careers off one horse; kind of a trick horse, a wonder horse. I'm not knocking that, but for me I'm trying to get better and study. That means taking out new horses. It's a life study. When I've finished a horse, I turn him out and basically stop riding him, except taking him to the occasional branding so I can enjoy him.
I have to say my relationship with the horses is the biggest thing, and it grows. I love horses more and more every day, and I'm breeding, so when I'm playing a horse that's the son of a horse, the daughter of a horse I used to play, it's like bonding. So I think that's the most amazing part of it. It's the passion that we polo players have for the horses first, and then the game and the strategy of the game and winning and the team and your teammates, all of those things are a big part of it, but the horses are my favorite part.
Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you're on a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. Of course, there are other strategies. You can change riders. You can get a committee to study the dead horse. You can benchmark how other companies ride dead horses. You can declare that it's cheaper to feed a dead horse. You can harness several dead horses together. But after you've tried all these things, you're still going to have to dismount.
I have no time for real horses, so I have a plastic horse. Large size. Called Max Von Sydow. For photographs it looks real. If I do a photo shoot and it stands in the background, you think it's a horse. A horse is a horse.
There's an ancient bond that still exists today between horses and humans, it is even there with people that have never ridden a horse or been around horses. The horse is what settled the entire west. If it weren’t for the horse they’d probably be only a couple hundred miles from where they started. A lot of people don’t realize how much they owe the horse because it’s not so much a part of our culture right now as it used to be.
I used to ride horses and I remember one day I was working with a horse and we were having it jump, you know? There was a competition and so we were doing a test run and the horse fell on top of my body. I was a kid, like 7 years old. It took them a long time to take the horse off of my body after it had fallen.
I remember some people after the Olympics that had no idea about horses would ask, 'Do you do that with the horse, or does the horse do it by itself?' I think the fact that you can make it look like you are doing nothing is a real talent. And it is such a massive reward at the end of it.
I asked for a horse for Christmas, and I got one! It's an adult horse. I didn't want a 5-year-old, which is a teenager for horses. It has a beautiful gait. It's the Cadillac of horses.
You try to do the best with what you've got and ignore everything else. That's why horses get blinders in horse racing: You look at the horse next to you, and you lose a step.
If the human isn’t responsible for their role in the horse human relationship, horses just don’t get along very well. So that’s why I say it’s all about the human meeting the bill to fit the horse in any given situation. But don’t expect the horse to always fit the human.
With horses, familiarity breeds comfort. If you haven't been around horses for a while (or ever), the best thing to do is to go to the racetrack, a horse show, a rodeo, or some other horsey activity, and watch the horses. Familiarize yourself with the way they move and behave themselves.
If you have a horse that can beat horses worth $20,000, typically you enter it in a $20,000 claiming race. Now there might be people who feel their horse is worth $20,000, and they say, 'I wouldn't mind seeing the horse get beat.' So they'll enter it for $40,000 so the horse looks like it's performed badly.
How the horse dominated the mind of the early races especially of the Mediterranean! You were a lord if you had a horse. Far back, far back in our dark soul the horse prances...The horse, the horse! The symbol of surging potency and power of movement, of action in man!
I remember kids used to give me a penny for drawing them a horse. I loved horses, but I couldn't have one, so I would draw a horse for myself. I would make it food and a blanket for it to wear and a place to live.
Technological revolutions are very hard to predict. My favourite example is someone in 1850 taking care of horses as a farrier. They would have said, "Look, horses have been part of human existence for 5,000 years. We are horse people. It's permanent." But all of a sudden, the internal combustion engine comes along and, with it, oil fields and automobiles, which basically replace the horse completely. So we often have these long periods of stability and then a sudden inflection point.
Related Authors
Adam Smith Quotes
Scottish
Economist
Alan Greenspan Quotes
American
Economist
Benjamin Graham Quotes
American
Economist
Friedrich August von Hayek Quotes
Austrian
Economist
John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes
American
Economist
John Maynard Keynes Quotes
English
Economist
Joseph Stiglitz Quotes
American
Economist
Ludwig von Mises Quotes
Austrian
Economist
Milton Friedman Quotes
American
Economist
Muhammad Yunus Quotes
Bangladeshi
Economist
Murray Rothbard Quotes
American
Economist
Paul Krugman Quotes
American
Economist
Richard Thaler Quotes
American
Economist
Robert Reich Quotes
American
Economist
Thomas Sowell Quotes
American
Economist
Walter E. Williams Quotes
American
Economist