The Austrian Economists blog has a great post (“Hard Work Pays Off“) giving a bunch of advice for grad students. Below are some of my favorite quotations:
- Don Lavoie — “Why are you doing this? Don’t ever forget your answer to that question.”
- James Buchanan — “All work is work in progress. Don’t get it right, get it written.”
- James Buchanan — “It takes varied reiterations to force alien concepts upon reluctant minds.”
- Bob Tollison — “Never consider a criticism as lethal, but instead as an opportunity for another line on your CV.”
- Kenneth Boulding — “At some point in your career you will be confronted with the following dilemma — should you read or should you write. I chose to write.”
- Peter Boettke — “Look out the window rather than on the black board for your questions. Strive to find puzzles where it appears that history defies what logic dictates and then solve the puzzle by demonstrating with the tools of rational choice theory and institutional analysis the the defiance was only an illusion.”
- Andrei Shleifer — “Why be boring?”
And most importantly…
- James Buchanan — “The best dissertation is a done dissertation.”