Simon Kuznets

“I was born in Russia in 1901 of Jewish parents and came to the United States in 1922 to join my father, who left Russia for the United States before World War I.”

“Memorable occasions should be brief, and so should be the expressions of appreciation.”

“With the rather stable ratio of labor force to total population, a high rate of increase in per capita product means a high rate of increase in product per worker; and, with average hours of work declining, it means still higher growth rates in product per man-hour.”

“It was at the graduate school at Columbia University that I first met Wesley C. Mitchell, with whom I was associated for many years at the National Bureau of Economic Research and to whom I owe a great intellectual debt.”

“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.”

“Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country's economic growth?”

“The dynamic drives of modern economic growth, in the countries that entered the process ahead of others, meant a reaching out geographically; and the sequential spread of the process, facilitated by major changes in transport and communication, meant a continuous expansion to the less developed areas.”

“Success in war and preservation of a country's social framework as a purpose at least equal in importance to welfare of individuals.”

“Mass application of technological innovations, which constitutes much of the distinctive substance of modern economic growth, is closely connected with the further progress of science, in its turn the basis for additional advance in technology.”

“War and peace type products... cannot be added into a national product total until the differences in the valuation due to differences in the institutional mechanisms that determine their respective market prices are corrected for.”

“A country's economic growth may be defined as a long-term rise in capacity to supply increasingly diverse economic goods to its population, this growing capacity based on advancing technology and the institutional and ideological adjustments that it demands.”

“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 welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP.”

“Economists must always be prepared for surprises: they find many in trying to find order in the universe of their study.”