Kate Raworth quotes

Kate Raworth is an economist and author known for her groundbreaking work on reimagining economics to create a more sustainable and equitable future. Her book, "Doughnut Economics," has gained international acclaim for its innovative approach to economic theory. Raworth is a Senior Research Associate at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and has advised policymakers and organizations around the world. Her work emphasizes the importance of balancing economic growth with social and environmental well-being. Follow Kate Raworth to stay updated on the latest insights in transforming economics for a better world.

Labour's mission should be to create a UK economy that's regenerative and distributive by design – one that meets the needs of all within the means of the living planet. Aiming for 'growth' simply won't deliver on that.

- Kate Raworth

Worldwide, one person in nine does not have enough to eat.

- Kate Raworth

Words are processed by our short-term memory where we can only retain about seven bits of information. Images, on the other hand, go directly into long-term memory where they are indelibly etched.

- Kate Raworth

What if we started economics not with its long-established theories but with humanity’s long-term goals, and then sought out the economic thinking that would enable us to achieve them. I tried to draw a picture of those goals and, ridiculous though it sounds, it came out looking like a doughnut...

- Kate Raworth

We would have to be crazy to kick ourselves out of the Holocene’s sweet spot, but that is, of course, exactly what we have been doing.

- Kate Raworth

We have an economy that needs to grow, whether or not it makes us thrive. We need an economy that makes us thrive, whether or not it grows.

- Kate Raworth

We are born pattern-spotters, seeing faces in the clouds, ghosts in the shadows, and mythical beasts in the stars.

- Kate Raworth

Toddlers just 14 months old will help others by handing them out-of-reach objects, and children as young as three will share their treats with others.

- Kate Raworth

Today’s economy is divisive and degenerative by default. Tomorrow’s economy must be distributive and regenerative by design.

- Kate Raworth

The essence of that industrial system is the cradle-to-grave manufacturing supply chain of take, make, use, lose: extract Earth’s minerals, metals, biomass and fossil fuels; manufacture them into products; sell those on to consumers who — probably sooner rather than later — will throw them ‘away’.

- Kate Raworth

The Doughnut’s inner ring—its social foundation—sets out the basics of life on which no one should be left falling short.

- Kate Raworth

The challenge now is to create economies – local to global – that help to bring all of humanity into the Doughnut’s safe and just space. Instead of pursuing ever-increasing GDP, it is time to discover how to thrive in balance.

- Kate Raworth

Thanks to the scale of our impact, we have now left behind the Holocene and entered uncharted territory, known as the Anthropocene: the first geological epoch that is shaped by human activity.

- Kate Raworth

Rethinking economics is not about finding the correct one (because it doesn’t exist); it’s about choosing or creating one that best serves our purpose—reflecting the context we face, values we hold, and the aims we have. As humanity’s context, values and aims continually evolve, so too should the way that we envision the economy.

- Kate Raworth

Regenerative industrial design can only be fully realised if it is underpinned by regenerative economic design.

- Kate Raworth

Pre-analytic vision. Worldview. Paradigm. Frame. These are cousin concepts. What matters more than the one you choose to use is to realize that you have one in the first place, because then you have the power to question and change it.

- Kate Raworth

People’s sense of reciprocity appears to co-evolve with their economy’s structure: a fascinating finding with important implications for those aiming to rebalance the roles of the household, market, commons and state in any society.

- Kate Raworth

Nudges and network effects often work because they tap into underlying norms and values — such as duty, respect and care — and those values can be activated directly.

- Kate Raworth

Just as there is no such thing as the free market, it turns out that there is no such thing as free trade: all cross-border flows are set against the backdrop of national history, current institutions and international power relations.

- Kate Raworth

It’s time to draw the economy anew, embedding it within society and within nature, and powered by the sun. This new depiction invites new narratives—about the power of the market, the partnership of the state, the core role of the household, and the creativity of the commons.

- Kate Raworth

In the words of the systems thinker John Sterman, 'The most important assumptions of a model are not in the equations, but what's not in them; not in the documentation, but unstated; not in the variables on the computer screen, but in the blank spaces around them'.

- Kate Raworth

In the twentieth century, economics lost the desire to articulate its goals: in their absence, the economic nest got hijacked by the cuckoo goal of GDP growth.

- Kate Raworth

In politics, money talks – when it must in public, but preferably in private, with hidden handshakes, closed-door meetings and under-the-table kickbacks.

- Kate Raworth

In contrast to Pareto’s pyramid and Kuznets’s rollercoaster ride, its essence is a distributed network whose many nodes, larger and smaller, are interconnected in a web of flows.

- Kate Raworth

In 1900, around 10 percent of people worldwide lived in cities; by 2050 around 70 percent of us will. Couple this proximity of city dwellers with worldwide communications transmitting news and views, data and ads, and what emerges is a dynamic global network of networks of human beings.

- Kate Raworth

If reinforcing feedbacks are what make a system move, then balancing feedbacks are what stop it from exploding or imploding. They counter and offset what is happening and, so, tend to regulate systems.

- Kate Raworth

Homo sapiens, it turns out, is the most cooperative species on the planet, outperforming ants, hyenas, and even the naked mole-rat when it comes to living alongside those who are beyond our next of kin.

- Kate Raworth

Here’s the rub. Humanity’s journey through the twenty-first century will be led by the policymakers, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, community organisers, activists and voters who are being educated today. But these citizens of 2050 are being taught an economic mindset that is rooted in the textbooks of 1950, which in turn are rooted in the theories of 1850. Given the fast-changing nature of the twenty-first century, this is shaping up to be a disaster.

- Kate Raworth

Governments have historically opted to tax what they could, rather than what they should, and it shows.

- Kate Raworth

From Taoism’s yin yang and the Māori takarangi to Buddhism’s endless knot and the Celtic double spiral, each design invokes a continual dynamic dance between complementary forces.

- Kate Raworth