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.

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.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

Without feeling abashed by my ignorance, I confess that I am absolutely unable to say. In the absence of an appearance of learning, my answer has at least one merit, that of perfect sincerity.

Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.

Concerning culture as a process, one would say that it means learning a great many things and then forgetting them; and the forgetting is as necessary as the learning.

And I like asking questions, to keep learning; people with big egos might not want to look unsure.

The lopsided attitudes of college professors pose a serious challenge to learning because students are so susceptible to becoming lopsided sheep.

I've never stopped learning.

I know what I like when I see it, but no way have I ever become interested in learning about it.

Not being a comic book fan, being thrown into that and seeing the extreme - it's taken very seriously. So I tried to do as much learning as I could about it so I wasn't mean or anything.

I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.

I'm learning English at the moment. I can say 'Big Ben', 'Hello Rodney', 'Tower Bridge' and 'Loo'.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

I love talking about women because they are a constant study and you're always learning.

The experience of learning how to get straight to the core of a problem proved to be of immense value later when I had a long succession of responsibilities in large, complex government departments.

I think that obstacles lead to growth and ultimately, the most learning I've done in my life is between jobs.

I view life as a learning experience. It is not so much all about music; it is about what happens when you are doing the music.

I like doing accents and I like learning as much as I can learn.

In any of the arts, you never stop learning.

I have never forgotten my days as an Eagle Scout. I didn't know it at the time, but what really came out of my Scouting was learning how to lead and serve the community. It has come in handy in my career in government.

You have to study your field and you have to find out how other people do it, and you have to keep working and learning and practicing and ultimately, you would be able to do it.

Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.