Gunnar Myrdal Quotations

The Negro problem, like all other political problems, is fundamentally a moral issue. This is realism, not idealism. Those of my colleagues who believe that they are particularly 'hard boiled' because they overlook the fact that human beings are struggling for their consciences are simply unrealistic.

America is the one rich country with the biggest slums, the least democratic and least developed health system, and the most niggardly attitude against its old people.

Compared with members of other nations of Western civilization, the ordinary American is a rationalistic being, and there are close relations between his moralism and his rationalism. Even romanticism, transcendentalism, and mysticism tend to be, in the American culture, rational, pragmatic and optimistic.

The ordinary American is the opposite of a cynic. He is on the average more of a believer and a defender of the faith in humanity than the rest of the Occidentals. It is a relatively important matter to him to be true to his own ideals and to carry them out in actual life.

In society, liberty for one may mean the suppression of liberty for others.

In my family, we don't die till we're 100 years old.

People don't realize the great happiness there is in living to be very old and together all the time.

During the three decades of its existence, the effectiveness of the United Nations has, on the whole, tended to decrease, particularly in the field of peace and security and, more generally, all issues in which the developed countries feel they have important stakes.

I am often considered almost not a part of the profession of Establishment economists. I am even referred to as a sociologist. And by that, economists usually do not mean anything flattering.

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

Toward the middle and end of the Fifties, West European countries became somewhat more important as providers of aid to underdeveloped countries. It was partly due to the prodding of the United States that these countries, as they regained economic viability, should shoulder their share of the aid burden.

In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.

In the United States, and to only slightly lesser degree in all the other rich and economically progressive Western countries, public debate has at all times been dominated by the adherents of a "free" economy.

The short-term international capital market is shrunken and erratic, and cannot be relied upon to cushion the effects of tendencies to disequilibrium in the balance of payments.

As a forecaster, Marx shared the common destiny of all prophets: to be belied by events.

America is conservative in fundamental principles... but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical.

America has had gifted conservative statesmen and national leaders. But with few exceptions, only the liberals have gone down in history as national heroes.

It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.

All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.

So many social changes are as irreversible as the reaction when sodium is thrown into water.

Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by Governments lacking courage and vision.

Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be found to press for ever more state intervention in practically all fields.

Education has in America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society.

Social taboos are shy like virtue; once lost, there is no remedy

People become less inhibited from wanting to change social and economic conditions in a radical fashion according to their own interests, and from being prepared to think of state intervention in ever wider spheres as possible and useful for this purpose.

It is no accident that the Victorian age, the heyday of conventionalism, was the cultural bloom of economic liberalism.

Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually their lot and what would be desirable, while in the poor countries large masses of people seem to be satisfied by merely surviving.

Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.

Planned parenthood" in the social history of the Western countries is, indeed, a phenomenon instrin-sically related to those very changes in peoples attitudes which, on the political plane, have been causing the trend towards economic planning.

The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes ... in drawing a parallel between the position of, and feeling toward, women and Negroes, we are uncovering a fundamental basis of our culture.

The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well-off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery almost without noticing them.

Language, as we know, is full of illogicalities.

It Is in the Agricultural Sector That the Battle for Long- Term Economic Development Will Be Won or Lost.

There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it.