"The adverse economic events following the First World War turned me toward economics... I learned during my youth how hard it was for farm families to stay solvent. Farm product prices fell abruptly by more than half. Banks went bankrupt and many farmers suffered foreclosures. Was politics or economics to blame? I opted for economics."

“Economists have long known that people are an important part of the wealth of nations.”

“The dominant social thought shapes the institutionalized order of society... and the malfunctioning of established institutions in turn alters social thought.”

“Although it is obvious that people acquire useful skills and knowledge, it is not obvious that these skills and knowledge are a form of capital, that this capital is in substantial part a product of deliberate investment, that it has grown in Western societies at a much faster rate than conventional capital, and that this growth may well be the most distinctive feature of the economic system.”

“Nobelprize.org: Autobiography”

“New York Times: Theodore Schultz, 95, Winner Of a Key Prize in Economics”

“efficient but poor hypothesis... that the combination of crops grown, the number of times and depth of cultivation, the time of planting, watering, and harvesting, the combination of hand tools, ditches to carry water to the fields, draft animals and simple equipment -- are all made with a fine regard for marginal costs.”