In the 1980s, there were occasions when it made sense to say, 'it is too difficult to maximize the likelihood function, and besides if we do, it will blow our model out of the water.'

Lucas attended a conference on rational expectations at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1973. The day after the conference, I received a call from Pittsburgh.

There was a danger that skeptics and opponents would misread those likelihood ratio tests as rejections of an entire class of models, which of course they were not.

The first and most optimistic response was complete rational expectations econometrics. A rational expectations equilibrium is a likelihood function. Maximize it.

In the 1980s, there were occasions when it made sense to say, 'it is too difficult to maximize the likelihood function, and besides if we do, it will blow our model out of the water.'

I think you've got to watch out for anybody in high school who says he wants to become an economist.

I wasn't the brightest kid, not by a long shot. I was interested in football, in girls, in getting my work done with the least amount of effort.

I'm happy to say I am a Harrison-Kreps-Keynesian.

Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.

What I really don't like is oversimplification.

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.

What we're doing is fun - if you have any sense of humor at all!

It was frightening because it was the first time I had gotten a sense of how serious the problem was. It became clear from his notes that he felt the president himself was involved.

Nothing is more pleasing and engaging than the sense of having conferred benefits. Not even the gratification of receiving them.

You've got to have a sense of humor to keep your sanity.

My music is so often like a lullaby I write to myself to make sense of things I can't tie together, or things I've lost, or things I'll never have.

I am not this big celebrity, but it gets really crazy. You have to go through the nuts of blowing up, in a sense, and then figuring out how to live your life with that.

It's not so much the amount of tax we pay - it's the sense that our pocket's being picked without our knowing what's going on.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

The art which we may call generally art of the wayside, as opposed to that which is the business of men's lives, is, in the best sense of the word, Grotesque.

Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.

From this bestial view that the human mind consists of only sense certainty, pleasure and pain, Locke developed an equally bestial theory of the nation. Man originally existed in a State of Nature of complete liberty.

I feel lazy when I'm not working. I learned all my business sense from my dad. He always believed in me, and I think the last thing he said to me before he passed away was, 'I know you're gonna be OK. I'm not worried about you'.

Reducing the budget for Amtrak makes no sense unless the Administration is prepared to implement a reform strategy which can be supported by the budget request.

By obtaining a sense of its place in the unfolding drama of life, set in an ecological theatre, so we can understand why it has become one of the leading players.

There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.

Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.

We suspect Dr. Clutterbuck's sense of hearing must be injured: for him the 'ear trumpet' magnifies but distorts sound, rendering it less distinct than before.

I think it is important to maintain a sense of self and confidence, not letting either falter for the sake of a particular part or project, no matter how great it might be.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.

I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.

If I were assigned poems I suppose I'd write more of them but it is entirely voluntary and for the most part ignored in the market sense of the word so the language to me is most intimate, most important, most sublime and most satisfying when it gets done.

But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.

We ought to be doing that with decent standard housing but if we have people who are absolutely on the streets in this case, I think it makes sense that tent cities are preferred to not having tent cities.

Memories, imagination, old sentiments, and associations are more readily reached through the sense of smell than through any other channel.

Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.

Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.

It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life.

The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.

Sexy at the millennium means having a solid sense of self but never taking yourself too seriously.

Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work and not imagine himself a martyr to art.

By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

Of the seven experiments, the ones that have been most investigated so far have been the pets. The dogs who know when their masters for coming home, and the sense of being stared at.

Everything I write comes from my childhood in one way or another. I am forever drawing on the sense of mystery and wonder and possibility that pervaded that time of my life.