Top 100 Paul Krugman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society.”

— Paul Krugman

2. “Politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth.”

— Paul Krugman

3. “Economists don’t usually make good speculators, because they think too much.”

— Paul Krugman

4. “The planet will continue to cook.”

— Paul Krugman

5. “Not all private equity people are evil. Only some.”

— Paul Krugman

6. “Simple doesn’t mean stupid. Thinking that it does, does.”

— Paul Krugman

7. “If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.”

— Paul Krugman

8. “Rising inequality isn’t about who has the knowledge; it’s about who has the power.”

— Paul Krugman

9. “The economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.”

— Paul Krugman

10. “Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst.”

— Paul Krugman

11. “Debt is one person’s liability, but another person’s asset.”

— Paul Krugman

12. “When stock prices are rising, it’s called “momentum investing”; when they are falling, it’s called “panic”.”

— Paul Krugman

13. “In our country, learned ignorance is on the rise.”

— Paul Krugman

14. “If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money.”

— Paul Krugman

15. “I’ve always believed in expansionary monetary policy and if necessary fiscal policy when the economy is depressed.”

— Paul Krugman

16. “I don’t think I’ve had any great success in predicting politics or social change, nor have I really tried.”

— Paul Krugman

17. “There are no atheists in foxholes and there are no libertarians in financial crises.”

— Paul Krugman

18. “Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.”

— Paul Krugman

19. “I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.”

— Paul Krugman

20. “The federal government is basically an insurance company with an army.”

— Paul Krugman

21. “People respond to incentives. If unemployment becomes more attractive because of the unemployment benefit, some unemployed workers may no longer try to find a job or may not try to find one as quickly as they would without the benefit.”

— Paul Krugman

22. “Something terrible has happened to the soul of the Republican Party. We’ve gone from bad economic doctrine. We’ve even gone beyond selfishness and special interests. At this point we’re talking about a state of mind that takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering upon the already miserable.”

— Paul Krugman

23. “Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.”

— Paul Krugman

24. “The world economy is in a nosedive, and understanding what I call “depression economics” – the weird world you get into when even a zero interest rate isn’t low enough, and a messed-up financial system is dragging down the real economy – is essential if we’re going to avoid the worst.”

— Paul Krugman

25. “I believe that the only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men.”

— Paul Krugman

26. “The habit of disguising ideology as expertise has created a deficit of legitimacy.”

— Paul Krugman

27. “The important thing to understand is that the case for pollution control isn’t based on some kind of aesthetic distaste for industrial society. Pollution does real, measurable damage, especially to human health.”

— Paul Krugman

28. “I have friends, political scientists, sociologists, who all share an interest at least in certain kinds of science fiction.”

— Paul Krugman

29. “What the Depression teaches us is that when the economy is so depressed that even a zero interest rate isn’t low enough, you have to put conventional notions of prudence and sound policy aside.”

— Paul Krugman

30. “As I’ve often said, you can shop online and find whatever you’re looking for, but bookstores are where you find what you weren’t looking for.”

— Paul Krugman

31. “For most Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.”

— Paul Krugman

32. “When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly.”

— Paul Krugman

33. “Under the gold standard America had no major financial panics other than in 1873, 1884, 1890, 1893, 1907, 1930, 1931, 1932, and 1933.”

— Paul Krugman

34. “Coming up with a good idea, with an insight into the way the world works that is really new and that you really believe in, is a deeply satisfying experience.”

— Paul Krugman

35. “Generous unemployment benefits can increase both structural and frictional unemployment. So government policies intended to help workers can have the undesirable side effect of raising the natural rate of unemployment.”

— Paul Krugman

36. “Now that Eastern Europe is free from the alien ideology of Communism, it can return to its true historical path – fascism.”

— Paul Krugman

37. “We should try to create the society each of us would want if we didn’t know in advance who we’d be.”

— Paul Krugman

38. “If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God.”

— Paul Krugman

39. “So what are the effects of increasing minimum wages? Any Econ 101 student can tell you the answer: The higher wage reduces the quantity of labor demanded, and hence leads to unemployment.”

— Paul Krugman

40. “Sometimes economists in official positions give bad advice; sometimes they give very, very bad advice; and sometimes they work at the OECD.”

— Paul Krugman

41. “The problem isn’t that people don’t understand how good things are. It’s that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren’t that good.”

— Paul Krugman

42. “I think so long as fossil fuels are cheap, people will use them and it will postpone a movement towards new technologies.”

— Paul Krugman

43. “The great thing about fiscal policy is that it has a direct impact and doesn’t require you to bind the hands of future policymakers.”

— Paul Krugman

44. “We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis.”

— Paul Krugman

45. “Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they’re with.”

— Paul Krugman

46. “What saved the economy, and the New Deal was the enormous public-works project known as World War II, which finally provided a fiscal stimulus adequate to the economy’s needs.”

— Paul Krugman

47. “One is reminded of the old joke about the centipede who was asked how he managed to coordinate his 100 legs : He started thinking about it and could never walk properly again.”

— Paul Krugman

48. “This is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.”

— Paul Krugman

49. “It’s a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.”

— Paul Krugman

50. “America’s political landscape is infested with many zombie ideas – beliefs about policy that have been repeatedly refuted with evidence and analysis but refuse to die. The most prominent zombie is the insistence that low taxes on rich people are the key to prosperity.”

— Paul Krugman