With the variety of fields within economics, broadly conceived and the increasing specialization of scholarly world, the award of a Nobel Memorial Prize honors not only the individual scholar but, implicitly, also a special field or a distinctive method.
The Nobel Prize is given as a personal award but it also honors the field of research in which I have worked and it also honors my students and colleagues.
National Review once opined, many years ago, that, every year, the Nobel peace prize should go to the U.S. secretary of defense: The American military is the number-one guarantor of peace in the world. But maybe something like a Nobel freedom prize would be a more appropriate award for Reagan than a peace prize.
The Nobel prize is unquestionably the most famous prize in the world, and very often, the prize is an object of prestige not only for a person but also for a research center, a country, or for a particular area of interest.
As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of my own countrymen. Greater writers than these also did not receive the prize. I would have been happy - happier - today if the prize had been given to that beautiful writer Isak Dinesen.
The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.
[Bob] Dylan thus deserves the Nobel Prize, not just for "new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," as the Nobel committee aptly described his work, but also for embodying the contradictions within it.
When, over fifty years ago, I first became interested in economics - as a discipline that provided the key to social structure and social problems - it never crossed my mind that one day I might be the honored recipient of a Nobel Memorial Prize.
Thanks to the high standing which science has for so long attain and to the impartiality of the Nobel Prize Committee, the Nobel Prize for Physics is rightly considered everywhere as the highest reward within the reach of workers in Natural Philosophy.
When the Nobel Peace Prize Committee designated me the recipient of the 1970 award for my contribution to the 'green revolution,' they were in effect, I believe, selecting an individual to symbolize the vital role of agriculture and food production in a world that is hungry, both for bread and for peace.
I think it is true to say that I am not the first Nobel Prize winner in economics to have little formal training in economics.
The Nobel award occasions a unique celebration of the vision of science by the public at large. The prestige the prize confers today is largely due to the extraordinary diligence of the Nobel committees.
I'm not sure whether I could win a Nobel Prize or not, but the Nobel Committee called me, and, 'You got the Nobel Prize.' So, I was so, so happy, and I was so surprised.
It's not only possible, but likely that the Nobel Prize in economics will go in alternate years to people who disagree on nearly everything fundamental.
When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 88, she was the oldest person ever to receive the prize and one of only 11 female winners in its history. Her award was the end of a very long journey from a remote farm in Rhodesia to a banquet at Stockholm's Stadshus, the grand city hall in Stockholm.
I think the Nobel Prize helps for a number of reasons. Number one, if I can be frank, there is these people will feel by getting a Nobel Prize that I'm one of them, that it is possible to contribute on the world map of science and technology. And the other thing also which I'm hoping for is that the government in Egypt is willing and interested in promoting science and technology and this is an ideal time now to be able to do something.