Top 100 Paul Krugman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “And that’s just the beginning. More and more, conventional wisdom says that the responsible thing is to make the unemployed suffer. And while the benefits from inflicting pain are an illusion, the pain itself will be all too real.”

— Paul Krugman

52. “Evidence and expertise have a well-known liberal bias.”

— Paul Krugman

53. “Middle-class societies don’t emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action.”

— Paul Krugman

54. “One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the ‘high school movement’ made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education.”

— Paul Krugman

55. “The economic expansion that began in 2001, while it has been great for corporate profits, has yet to produce any significant gains for ordinary working Americans. And now it looks as if it never will.”

— Paul Krugman

56. “In short, it’s a great economy if you’re a high-level corporate executive or someone who owns a lot of stock. For most other Americans, economic growth is a spectator sport.”

— Paul Krugman

57. “The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.”

— Paul Krugman

58. “I really think that people have to think safety; taking risks for higher yield is a bad idea once you’re in late or latish middle age.”

— Paul Krugman

59. “The public has no idea that the deficit has been falling like a stone.”

— Paul Krugman

60. “And when the chickens that didn’t hatch come home to roost, we will rue the day when, misled by sloppy accounting and rosy scenarios, we gave away the national nest egg.”

— Paul Krugman

61. “The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time.”

— Paul Krugman

62. “A snarky but accurate description of monetary policy over the past five years is that the Federal Reserve successfully replaced the technology bubble with a housing bubble.”

— Paul Krugman

63. “The French, unfortunately, actually believe what they say, and that has been very destructive.”

— Paul Krugman

64. “Political figures who talk a lot about liberty and freedom invariably turn out to mean the freedom to not pay taxes and discriminate based on race; freedom to hold different ideas and express them, not so much.”

— Paul Krugman

65. “You really have to go searching desperately to find any contemporary examples of good, old-fashioned runaway inflation.”

— Paul Krugman

66. “Congress has always had a soft spot for “experts” who tell members what they want to hear, whether it’s supply-side economists declaring that tax cuts increase revenue or climate-change skeptics insisting that global warming is a myth.”

— Paul Krugman

67. “Surely I’m not the only person to ask the obvious question: How different, really, is Mr. Madoff’s tale from the story of the investment industry as a whole?”

— Paul Krugman

68. “But where will the Fed find another bubble?”

— Paul Krugman

69. “Asset bubbles have happened even without not-so-easy money. And, in a depressed economy, where alternative uses of money are not great, people are going to bid up the prices of profitable corporations and stuff like that.”

— Paul Krugman

70. “But Wall Street people are in fact very smart; they’re funny, they’re not company men who work their way up the chain.”

— Paul Krugman

71. “People who are complaining about the Fed are people who’ve been predicting runaway inflation for five and six years, and it hasn’t happened.”

— Paul Krugman

72. “The science fiction world has a lot of people doing seriously imaginative thinking.”

— Paul Krugman

73. “Democracy or breakdown in Syria would change the whole Middle East overnight.”

— Paul Krugman

74. “I don’t want a job in the administration; I think I’m more effective carping from the sidelines.”

— Paul Krugman

75. “Economics is not a morality play.”

— Paul Krugman

76. “I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law.”

— Paul Krugman

77. “A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy.”

— Paul Krugman

78. “Tax cuts were not going to be effective at creating jobs, and the job creation record is lousy.”

— Paul Krugman

79. “I’m not sure that the current value of the NASDAQ is justified, but I’m not sure that it isn’t.”

— Paul Krugman

80. “When the Fed decides that inflation is too high, they have the tools, and they’ve shown historically that they have the will, to bring it down. And, it might be painful.”

— Paul Krugman

81. “The United States in particular and the West in general should be feeling a little embarrassed about all that lecturing we did to the Third World.”

— Paul Krugman

82. “In fact, I’d say that the sources of the economy’s expansion from 2003 to 2007 were, in order, the housing bubble, the war, and – very much in third place – tax cuts.”

— Paul Krugman

83. “Anyone who thinks that the last 80 years, ever since FDR took us off gold, have been a doomed venture, that strikes me as kind of cranky.”

— Paul Krugman

84. “The Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality.”

— Paul Krugman

85. “There’s one thing that the Fed has been really good at cracking down on, and that’s inflation.”

— Paul Krugman

86. “Wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.”

— Paul Krugman

87. “If Europe’s example is any guide, here are the two secrets of coping with expensive oil: own fuel-efficient cars, and don’t drive them too much.”

— Paul Krugman

88. “However, the fact that an economist offers a theoretical analysis does not and should not automatically command respect. What is needed is some assurance that the analysis is actually relevant.”

— Paul Krugman

89. “Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it’s often painful.”

— Paul Krugman

90. “By rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely.”

— Paul Krugman

91. “Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is by and large elderly white people arguing with empty chairs.”

— Paul Krugman

92. “The trouble with poverty, as an issue, is that it has basically exhausted the patience of the general public.”

— Paul Krugman

93. “Can we break the machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the United States? The scariest part is that the media is part of that machine.”

— Paul Krugman

94. “Outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan. It’s a modern Republican thing.”

— Paul Krugman

95. “Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.”

— Paul Krugman

96. “There’s nothing magic about spending on tanks and bombs rather than roads and bridges.”

— Paul Krugman

97. “Now, it’s true that some of the protesters are oddly dressed or have silly-sounding slogans, which is inevitable given the open character of the events. But so what? I, at least, am a lot more offended by the sight of exquisitely tailored plutocrats, who owe their continued wealth to government guarantees, whining that President Obama has said mean things about them than I am by the sight of ragtag young people denouncing consumerism.”

— Paul Krugman

98. “If it were profitable to have indentured servants in the modern world, I’m sure that Richard Scaife’s think tanks would have no trouble finding justifications, and assorted Christian groups would explain why it’s God’s will.”

— Paul Krugman

99. “Some people want the past repeated and have an interest in making sure we don’t remember it.”

— Paul Krugman

100. “If you can create even the illusion of high profitability for a few years, then when the thing collapses you can walk out of the wreckage a very rich man.”

— Paul Krugman