As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.

Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with every day observation.

Amherst is a liberal arts college, committed to providing students with a broad education.

There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists.

I think in part the reason is that seeing an economy that is, in many ways, quite different from the one grows up in, helps crystallize issues: in one's own environment, one takes too much for granted, without asking why things are the way they are.

I grew up in a family in which political issues were often discussed, and debated intensely.

I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous.

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

But while I loved all of these courses, there was an irresistible attraction of economics.

I, like many members of my generation, was concerned with segregation and the repeated violation of civil rights.

My teachers helped guide and motivate me; but the responsibility of learning was left with me, an approach to learning which was later reinforced by my experiences at Amherst.

As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.

The extra curricular activity in which I was most engaged - debating - helped shape my interests in public policy.

But individuals and firms spend an enormous amount of resources acquiring information, which affects their beliefs; and actions of others too affect their beliefs.

I went to public schools, and while Gary was, like most American cities, racially segregated, it was at least socially integrated - a cross section of children from families of all walks of life.

I went to Amherst because my brother had gone there before me, and he went there because his guidance counselor thought that we would do better there than at a large university like Harvard.

My research in this period centered around growth, technical change, and income distribution, both how growth affected the distribution of income and how the distribution of income affected growth.

Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.

I knew that discrimination existed, even though there were many individuals who were not prejudiced.

In debate, one randomly was assigned to one side or the other. This had at least one virtue - it made one see that there was more than one side to these complex issues.

Certainly, the poverty, the discrimination, the episodic unemployment could not but strike an inquiring youngster: why did these exist, and what could we do about them.

The notion that every well educated person would have a mastery of at least the basic elements of the humanities, sciences, and social sciences is a far cry from the specialized education that most students today receive, particularly in the research universities.

If stability and efficiency required that there existed markets that extended infinitely far into the future - and these markets clearly did not exist - what assurance do we have of the stability and efficiency of the capitalist system?

Development is about transforming the lives of people not just transforming economies.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.

A lot of these industries are having difficulty finding reliable workers with the skills they require.

Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.

I think the biggest difficulty is that when I'm here in America, there's a necessity of using English, so I really have a great sense of really wanting to learn, but unfortunately when I head back to Japan, the necessity vanishes and so does my enthusiasm about learning.

I'm sure that you could go back and make a graph showing that all the killings of black males increased in times of economic difficulty. As a matter of fact, a black man was lynched last year.

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty.

Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community. It's tough, difficult, not easy. But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny.

The accumulation of skill and science which has been directed to diminish the difficulty of producing manufactured goods, has not been beneficial to that country alone in which it is concentrated; distant kingdoms have participated in its advantages.

For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation.

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

I should point out, however, that at first some difficulty was experienced in observing the phenomena predicted by the theory, owing to the extreme smallness of the variations in the period of oscillation.

Perhaps, to the uninformed, it may appear unaccountable that a man should be able to retain in his memory such a variety of learning; but the close alliance with each other, of the different branches of science, will explain the difficulty.

Given the difficulty of resisting such temptations over the longer run, a proper concern for the welfare of congressional souls may well be the ultimate argument in favor of term limitations.

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

It is a high patriotic duty that we support and sustain the men who have been placed in position of difficulty, burden, responsibility, and even danger as the result of our suffrages.

Give yourself an even greater challenge than the one you are trying to master and you will develop the powers necessary to overcome the original difficulty.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it's very different from most of the ones I've had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it.

By no means do I anticipate screening those who come on to campus... And I have no difficulty if a bishop across the country or some local pastor may say that's not Catholic teaching - that's fine.

Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.

Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models.