Quotes About Incentives

#1. Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life. And understanding them - or, often, deciphering them - is the key to understanding a problem, and how it might be solved.

Steven D. Levitt

#2. The poor need the motivation, the incentives, the skills, the education so they can help themselves.

John M. Perkins

#3. All human interaction, you can break it down to incentives. All relationships, at some level, are transactional. They're fascinated with incentives.

Steven Soderbergh

#4. When we face our problems, they disappear. So learn from failure and let success be the silent incentive.

Carlos Slim

#5. Clearly this business of treating minds, particularly this big business of treating young minds, has not policed itself, and has no incentive to put a stop to the kinds of fraudulent and unethical practices that are going on.

Patricia Schroeder

#6. Enemies can be an incentive to survive and become someone in spite of them. Enemies can keep you alert and aware.

Louis L'Amour

#7. Open source production has shown us that world-class software, like Linux and Mozilla, can be created with neither the bureaucratic structure of the firm nor the incentives of the marketplace as we've known them.

Howard Rheingold

#8. Live the present intensely and fully, do not let the past be a burden, and let the future be an incentive. Each person forges his or her own destiny.

Carlos Slim

#9. Forces of Destruction: grades in school, merit system, incentive pay, business plans, quotas.

W. Edwards Deming

#10. Every time we pretend to know something, we are doing the same: protecting our own reputation rather than promoting the collective good. None of us want to look stupid, or at least overmatched, by admitting we don't know an answer.

Steven D. Levitt

#11. If you wanted to predict how people would behave, Munger said, you only had to look at their incentives.

Michael Lewis

#12. I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#13. End perverse incentives that reward Wall Street speculators.

Ralph Nader

#14. If you take a look at Medicare, there are things we could do, not just tort reform but truly reform the whole reimbursement system which will help in terms of reducing costs and creating the right kind of incentives for savings.

John Hoeven

#15. I think we also have learned the lesson that we have to have better incentive structures.

Richard Thaler

#16. Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis - how incentives influence behavior - to government.

George Will

#17. Making wise decisions requires more than incentives. It requires wisdom.

James Taranto

#18. The truth is, aging can be your realest opportunity to decide how best to live - and the best incentive for getting you to do just that.

Elizabeth Berg

#19. We didn't wait for the renewable heat incentives to come into place; we wanted to be first to provide consumers with alternative ways to heat their homes.

Martin Naughton

#20. Those who profess the faith of Life regard the ideals of mankind as an expression of man's higher needs. Ideals which were once incentives to development thus become a drag upon it whenever life's needs demand new forms that are not recognised by the prevailing idealism.

Ellen Key

#21. The fact that the United States has political, economic, and legal structures that do indeed create incentives to control hazards (in the workplace) is one the reasons the corporations have moved to Latin America and Asia.

Vincent A. Gallagher

#22. Motivating people is more than having the right incentives, the right programs and the right benefit packages. It's about tapping into the unique passions, personalities and strengths of those entrusted to our care.

Steve Knox

#23. It's our job as economic developers in the state to make sure any prospect receives all available incentives.

Larry Williams

#24. If your incentives are set up wrong - if for some reason you reward people for behavior that's actually bad for your customers or your organization - then you're going to encourage that behavior.

Ramez Naam

#25. When it comes to trying to manage how our entire planet-wide market and all the people and businesses in it deal with nature and our natural resources - we first and foremost need to change the incentives.

Ramez Naam

#26. Yet if states were destroyed, local institutions corrupted, and economic incentives directed towards murder, few of us would behave well.

Timothy Snyder

#27. The trans fat label has been an enormous incentive for food companies to take trans fat out of their products.

Marion Nestle

#28. When you teach, you need to give the students incentives by grades or by other factors. I went to the Bible to find that topic in Scripture. I was shocked that after college and graduate school I had no idea that Jesus Christ had talked so much about rewards.

Bruce Wilkinson

#29. Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen.

Bill Gates

#30. In India, advisors may receive incentives as referral fees, commission, brokerage, etc. from various financial services organizations including banks. In

Jigar Patel

#31. I try to motivate people and align our individual incentives with organizational incentives. And then let people do their best.

John Liu

#32. Over a period of time, they [undocumented workers] can have a legalized status that allows them to live a life of dignity but not necessarily a path to citizenship, so as to not create incentives for future people that aspire to come to our country to do so illegally when they could come legally.

Jeb Bush

#33. If history judges society for how it treats those in need, so markets judge economies by the incentives they provide for private investment, the infrastructure that supports growth, and the burdens placed on job creation.

Victor Ponta

#34. Making money never was my incentive. I just want to fight big companies.

Richard Branson

#35. The incentives are still rotten, and people are still paid to do things they shouldn't be doing. The reforms did not really address the incentives, the system is still dysfunctional and there are still behavioural issues that need to be addressed.

Michael Lewis

#36. Big companies are reliant on institutional investors on a punishing schedule which leads to ruthless behaviour. This form of capitalism with this structure and incentives will never deliver sustainability.

Tim Jackson

#37. A slave lacks incentives; for him it is better to work slowly and badly, since his effort benefits only the master, but free people work hard to save and get ahead,, that is their incentive.

Isabel Allende

#38. The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism - the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise.

Henry Hazlitt

#39. We shouldn't be surprised if this kind of stoicism is of no interest whatsoever to the news, for it has sound commercial incentives for overemphasizing our vulnerability.

Alain De Botton

#40. If you want to predict a person's behavior, identify his or her incentives. Leo

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

#41. Politicians like to talk about incentives - for businesses to relocate, for example, or to get folks to buy local.

Tom Golisano

#42. As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and self-serving.

John Stossel

#43. People respond to incentives. If unemployment becomes more attractive because of the unemployment benefit, some unemployed workers may no longer try to find a job or may not try to find one as quickly as they would without the benefit.

Paul Krugman

#44. Living in New York City gives people real incentives to want things that nobody else wants.

Andy Warhol

#45. We have yet to discover the true incentive, the inner Will which will have an over-mastering effect upon our lives, and yet be present in every circumstance and incident.

Nilakanta Sri Ram

#46. If there is a real desire, if the thing desired is really light, the desire for light produces it. There is a real desire when there is an effort of attention. It is really light that is desired if all other incentives are absent.

Simone Weil

#47. To the lack of incentive to effort, which is the awful shadow under which we live, may be traced the wreck and ruin of scores of colored youth.

Mary Church Terrell

#48. Simplification of the tax code would not only unlock dormant economic potential, but, in the process, it would blunt the preferred weapon of social engineers, who reward favored industries, punish success and distort economic incentives.

David Harsanyi

#49. With respect to their safety, derivatives, for the most part, are traded among very sophisticated financial institutions and individuals who have considerable incentive to understand them and to use them properly.

Ben Bernanke

#50. If the price of everything is going down, that's going to include wages as well. People will have an incentive to sit on their cash and not spend it.

Paul Krugman

#51. The best design work is really done when you spend more time with people, when you have the opportunity to be of the same mindset and the same incentives as the founder of the business.

Yves Behar

#52. Increased government spending can provide a temporary stimulus to demand and output but in the longer run higher levels of government spending crowd out private investment or require higher taxes that weaken growth by reducing incentives to save, invest, innovate, and work.

Martin Feldstein

#53. The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.

Maria Montessori

#54. when we have no memory or little imagination of an alternative to a life centered on work, there are few incentives to reflect on why we work as we do and what we might wish to do instead.

Kathi Weeks

#55. Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.

Charlie Munger

#56. Also, there are now new laws in Brazil which create incentives for Argentine and Latin American films to be premiered and distributed in Brazil and vice versa.

Walter Salles

#57. Education campaigns ... may not be enough, at least not alone. If people have no incentive to avoid AIDS on their own, even if they know everything about the disease, they still may not change their behavior.

Emily Oster

#58. For the postwar peace, he preferred to minimize direct government intervention and manipulate the economy through fiscal and other incentives.

Tony Judt

#59. I would not be opposed to devising a new system of pensions, in which one part was based on collective provision, but which also gave incentives for people to take out an additional, personal plan.

Jacques Delors

#60. Capitalism has given people both the liberty and the incentive to create, produce, and trade, thereby generating prosperity.

Johan Norberg

#61. So, we're saying, if we can give developers and builders incentives to cut down on the regulatory barriers that are faced in this country, then we might be able to address the needs of affordable housing.

Alphonso Jackson

#62. By properly deploying both incentives and nudges, we can improve our ability to improve people's lives, and help solve many of society's major problems. And we can do so while still insisting on everyone's freedom to choose.

Richard H. Thaler

#63. We must start now to provide additional stimulus to the modernization of American industrial plants I shall propose to the Congress a new tax incentive for businesses to expand their normal investment in plant and equipment.

John F. Kennedy

#64. The eureka moment is two reasons why the output-based standard should be adopted: common sense and accountability. Input-based standards don't encourage energy diversity; they don't create any incentives; they don't produce solar, hydro, nuclear.

Frank Luntz

#65. If you take all the money we've spent at NASA since we landed on the moon and you had applied that money for incentives to the private sector, we would today probably have a permanent station on the moon, three or four permanent stations in space, a new generation of lift vehicles.

Newt Gingrich

#66. Tax incentives might spur hiring in the short run, but how lasting are those gains if the jobs expire with the tax credits and they come at the expense of investing in the new technologies of the future?

Myron Scholes

#67. Most of economics can be summarized in four words: 'People respond to incentives.' The rest is commentary.

Steven Landsburg

#68. People who earn reasonable amounts are being turned into the anti-Christ. I think 45 per cent tax is a colossal amount to take off somebody, and it is taking away the incentive to earn.

Anthea Turner

#69. We need different perspectives here in Washington - someone who has private-sector experience, somebody who's actually created jobs, manufactures products, understands the incentives and disincentives, the intended and unintended consequences of legislation.

Ron Johnson

#70. It's natural that you'd have more brains going into money management. There are so many huge incomes in money management and investment banking - it's like ants to sugar. There are huge incentives for a man to take up money management as opposed to, say, physics, and it's a lot easier.

Charlie Munger

#71. It's a tremendous way of getting people to buy more at lower cost to the producer. There's no question that that's an incentive to buy. Everybody loves a bargain.

Marion Nestle

#72. The policies advocated by the welfare school remove the incentive to saving on the part of private citizens.

Ludwig Von Mises

#73. Obama's perverse view of fairness threatens to create reverse incentives, militating against growth, jobs, expansion and upward mobility.

Dick Morris

#74. Complex regulation in place of simple-rules capitalism disrupts market processes and corrupts business incentives.

Robert L. Bradley Jr.

#75. The challenge for the principal, then, is to devise incentives to ensure that she (the agent) will act in the best interest of her principal. This

Janine Wedel

#76. The right solution is a progressive annual tax on capital. This will make it possible to avoid an endless inegalitarian spiral while preserving competition and incentives for new instances of primitive accumulation.

Thomas Piketty

#77. Riches, the incentives to evil, are dug out of the earth.

Ovid

#78. Simply having rules does not change the things that people want to do. You have to change incentives.

Jimmy Wales

#79. Curiosity is one of the strongest human incentives

Claude C. Hopkins

#80. In daily life, reality gives us material incentives to restrain our irrationality. But what incentive do we have to think rationally about politics?

Bryan Caplan

#81. We do not live in a world that mainly suffers bad policies due to lack of ideas about better ones, or lack of elegant explanations supporting good policies, but one that suffers bad policies due to system and meta-system level incentives.

Patri Friedman

#82. I have learned that human beings are all about incentives

Harlan Coben

#83. I love the ability to work with very good managers, and to provide the right incentives for them, and truly become a partner with that management, and make that management take a long view.

Henry Kravis

#84. Congress is headed in the wrong direction with this bill which removes any and all incentives from the food industry to improve their products for children.

Bob Filner

#85. Outright bans on plastic bags may not be the best solution, but education and incentives to get people to stop using them are necessary.

David Suzuki

#86. If I make your workplace conducive to walking at lunch, or working out at some time during the day, or I get people to use the stairs more by creating incentives to do such, then people will start doing it naturally.

Mehmet Oz

#87. It's just economics 101: When it's free to pollute, you get more pollution. But when there's a price to pay, industry will have an incentive to find low-cost carbon solutions.

Fred Krupp

#88. Incentives are spurs that goad a man to do what he doesn't particularly like, to get something he does particularly want. They are rewards he voluntarily strives for.

Paul G. Hoffman

#89. People might not change but their incentives could.

Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

#90. The eligibility for food stamps has widened and widened; welfare has been widened - unemployment insurance and disability insurance. These are all incentives not to work.

Lawrence Kudlow

#91. We would like a stable policy framework, and whatever incentives and tax structures are there should be made known to investors upfront. There should be credibility, clarity and continuity in both policy formulation and its implementation.

Narendra Modi

#92. Let's give people more incentives to get fuel efficient vehicles.

Mitt Romney

#93. Positive market incentives operating in the public interest are too few and far between, and are also up against a seemingly never-ending expansion of perverse incentives and lobbying.

Mo Ibrahim

#94. If we can find short-term incentives that are consistent with our long-term objectives, it is much easier to make the right decisions in the moment.

Tom Rath

#95. We have measured ourselves by ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone.

Aiden Wilson Tozer

#96. Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels,
teaching high living ,high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and, the world's good.

Samuel Smiles

#97. Those subjects have the greatest educational value, which are richest in incentives to the noblest self-activity.

John Lancaster Spalding

#98. A forced equalization of wages that disregards the marginal contributions of different workers will deaden incentives and lead to a misallocation of resources and effort.

Raghuram G. Rajan

#99. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.

Mary Ruwart

#100. The most difficult thing is to recognize that sometimes we too are blinded by our own incentives. Because we don't see how our conflicts of interest work on us.

Dan Ariely