Many thanks for all the excellent suggestions for an epigraph for Modern Principles. Here were some of our favorites:
"He tried to read an elementary economics text; it bored him past
endurance, it was like listening to someone interminably recounting a
long and stupid dream."
Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Dispossessed"
We liked that this has an exoteric and esoteric meaning but we suspect that it would be hard to get past "the Corporation." (The esoteric meaning? The novel is about a communist utopia so it's really no surprise that the characters (and the author) think that elementary economics texts are boring!). Suggested by Dave C.
N. Gregory Mankiw
Suggested by Eli Dourado.
– and not in a messianic fashion but in an honest fashion."
James J. Heckman
A close one. Suggested by Jared.
Suggested by Alex Tabarrok.
I liked it!
And the winner is:
I thought this phrase, which was suggested by Scott Gustafson, captured the joie de vivre and the love of economics that Tyler and I have tried to bring to Modern Principles. It's unclear who said this first, although nicely for us Russ Roberts used this phrase to describe Tyler's book Discover Your Inner Economist, thus there is some history.
Thanks everyone for your many helpful and excellent suggestions!
vivre
I don’t like it. It confuses the important distinction between personal life improvements (“self-help” books) and the catallaxy in which knowledge and opinions about the “good life” are far from homogeneous. Getting the most — for the least — may be a reasonable rendition of the economic principle for a given individual. But “economics” is far more than that.
Did you have fun reading the suggestions? I thought some of them would make excellent writing assignments. “Begin a story with the preceding quotation. End it with the following” 
Economics is an adventure, an exploration into the realm of social order. But who would want to explore a realm called “social order”? Which is why, to pass this class, we are forcing you to study this book.
Shame – the Mankiw one is the best!
Well, at least in the book itself, Anarres is described as a mining colony.
But I much prefer this quote –
“For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.†
(And noticing that the words of a man that supported tenure for a torturer are just above mine, one who uses the word ‘virtue,’ is sickening.)
Communism in its final stage!
The Mankiw quote made me laugh- who knows, maybe I’ll have another favorite economics textbook soon.
Too bad the joke would be lost on the reader…
How about adding an extra sentence to your final selection:
Economics is the study of how to get the most out of life, and help others do it as well.
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