The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by the GDP.

Success in war and preservation of a country's social framework as a purpose at least equal in importance to welfare of individuals.

Does inequality in the distribution of income increase or decrease in the course of a country's economic growth?

A country's economic growth may be defined as a long-term rise in capacity to supply increasingly diverse economic goods to its population, this growing capacity based on advancing technology and the institutional and ideological adjustments that it demands.

War and peace type products... cannot be added into a national product total until the differences in the valuation due to differences in the institutional mechanisms that determine their respective market prices are corrected for.

It was at the graduate school at Columbia University that I first met Wesley C. Mitchell, with whom I was associated for many years at the National Bureau of Economic Research and to whom I owe a great intellectual debt.