Economists often like startling theorems results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom.

You and I come by road or rail but economists travel on infrastructure.

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

With more than 67 percent of the Nation's freight moving on highways economists believe that our ability to compete internationally is tied to the quality of our infrastructure.

I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.

Health economists have estimated that an injection of $250 million per year in Indigenous clinical care and $50 million in preventative care is required to provide services at the same level as for any other group with the health conditions of Indigenous Australians.

Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society.

The biggest tab the public picks up for fossil fuels has to do with what economists call 'external costs ' like the health effects of air and water pollution.

With respect to the first of these obstacles it has often been made a matter of grave complaint against Political Economists that they confine their attention to Wealth and disregard all consideration of Happiness or Virtue.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

Economists report that a college education adds many thousands of dollars to a man's lifetime income - which he then spends sending his son to college.

There is the expression of selfishness and there is the expression of selflessness - but economists or theoreticians never touched that part. They said: 'Go and become a philanthropist.' I said 'No I can do that in the business world create a different kind of business - a business based on selflessness.'

I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.

Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard.

If all the economists were laid end to end they'd never reach a conclusion.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters economists and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.