Monday, October 09, 2006
Great insults by Tullock
I fondly remember my professor Gordon Tullock at GMU. He's one of those guys who really deserve to get the Nobel Prize in Economics. He has a brilliant mind and a thousand ideas that he is only too eager to try out on his Ph.D. Candidates. But the personal trait that stands out is his brilliance in insulting people. As the saying goes, Tullock never insults anybody he doesn't like. So I guess I should be really proud about all the insults he threw my way at the seminars. For example the time when I didn't hand in a paper and he quickly replied: "It was just as good. I would probably have flunked you anyways."
Another of Tullock's students has compiled a list with his favorite Tullock quotes! Some of them really stand out, like the following:
"The optimal class size is zero."
"The black fellas in Australia are a particularly oppressed group, it's my understanding that they spend most of their time drunk."
"Under Castro the Cuban economy has been particularly bad. There is no other country whose government's majority income comes from prostitution, at least none that I've heard of."
"Hume didn't make a lot of friends; he also spoke French with a Scotch accent."
"Under democracy I found myself walking up the beach in Normandy, and I wasn't very happy about it."
Another of Tullock's students has compiled a list with his favorite Tullock quotes! Some of them really stand out, like the following:
"The optimal class size is zero."
"The black fellas in Australia are a particularly oppressed group, it's my understanding that they spend most of their time drunk."
"Under Castro the Cuban economy has been particularly bad. There is no other country whose government's majority income comes from prostitution, at least none that I've heard of."
"Hume didn't make a lot of friends; he also spoke French with a Scotch accent."
"Under democracy I found myself walking up the beach in Normandy, and I wasn't very happy about it."
