Richard W. Evans, PhD

“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”

“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”

“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production.”

“The world is still a closed economy, but its regions and countries are becoming increasingly open.... The international economic climate has changed in the direction of financial integration, and this has important implications for economic policy.”

“The modern world regards business crises much as the ancient Egyptian regarded the overflowing of the Nile. The phenomenon recurs at intervals; it is of great importance to everyone, and natural causes of it are not in sight.”

“Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia’s or Egypt’s? If so, what, exactly? If not, what is it about the ‘nature of India’ that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.”

“No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous.”

“The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”

“In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.”

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”

“Mathematics is the art of reducing any problem to linear algebra.”

“If we can formulate a problem as a convex optimization problem, then we can solve it efficiently.... With only a bit of exaggeration, we can say that, if you formulate a practical problem as a convex optimization problem, then you have solved the original problem.”

“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.”

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”

“Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”

“The fundamental law of computer science: As machines become more powerful, the efficiency of algorithms grows more important, not less.”

“Prosperity is energy intensive.”

“In terms of priority, inspiration comes first. You come next. The audience comes last.”

“If one wishes to know whether a kingdom is well governed, examine the character of its music.”

“The hardest job for an artist is to create a work that other people love.”

“…every good product that I’ve ever seen… is because a group of people cared deeply about making something wonderful that they and their friends wanted…. That’s how almost everything I know that’s good has come about.”

“Open source policy models are fundamentally apolitical, because of their transparency, accessibility, and replicability.”

“Even small demographic changes have a bigger macroeconomic impact than any tax policy reform I have ever simulated.”