"There is nothing an economist should fear so much as applause"
About this Quote
Applause is the narcotic this line warns against: the moment a crowd claps, an economist should wonder what truth just got sanded down to fit the room. Coming from an actor, the jab lands with insider precision. Performers live and die by immediate feedback; Marshall is basically saying, "I know what it takes to get a hand, and you do not want your work optimized for that."
The specific intent is to draw a bright line between persuasion and accuracy. Economics is already half-explanation, half-storytelling: forecasts, narratives about incentives, tidy models that turn messy lives into legible charts. The temptation is to trade uncertainty for confidence, nuance for slogans, distributional pain for a single headline number. Applause signals you may have done that trade successfully.
The subtext is also about power. When an economist gets cheered, it often means they have reassured someone important: markets will self-correct, austerity will purify, this reform will pay for itself, your losses are temporary and necessary. Public approval can function like a moral alibi, laundering political choices into "common sense". Marshall's line treats popularity as a conflict of interest: the incentives are backwards, rewarding comfort over critique.
Context matters: Marshall lived through depressions, mass unemployment, and wartime planning - eras when economic ideas weren't seminar fodder but policy weapons. In those moments, the economist who earns applause might not be the one who is right, just the one who makes sacrifice sound orderly and inevitable.
The specific intent is to draw a bright line between persuasion and accuracy. Economics is already half-explanation, half-storytelling: forecasts, narratives about incentives, tidy models that turn messy lives into legible charts. The temptation is to trade uncertainty for confidence, nuance for slogans, distributional pain for a single headline number. Applause signals you may have done that trade successfully.
The subtext is also about power. When an economist gets cheered, it often means they have reassured someone important: markets will self-correct, austerity will purify, this reform will pay for itself, your losses are temporary and necessary. Public approval can function like a moral alibi, laundering political choices into "common sense". Marshall's line treats popularity as a conflict of interest: the incentives are backwards, rewarding comfort over critique.
Context matters: Marshall lived through depressions, mass unemployment, and wartime planning - eras when economic ideas weren't seminar fodder but policy weapons. In those moments, the economist who earns applause might not be the one who is right, just the one who makes sacrifice sound orderly and inevitable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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