Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved.
Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
Marx profoundly affected those who did not accept his system. His influence extended to those who least supposed they were subject to it.
It is the good fortune of the affluent country that the opportunity cost of economic discussion is low and hence it can afford all kinds.
The line dividing the state from what is called private enterprise, orat least fromthehighlyorganized part of it, is a traditional fiction.
All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.
The power of the corporate bureaucracy - the power of technostructure (a term that did not take off) - is something to which I still adhere.
However, it is safe to say that at the peak in 1929 the number of active speculators was less - and probably was much less - than a million.
Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. Anything that is disagreeable must surely have beneficial economic effects.
In recent times no problem has been more puzzling to thoughtful people than why, in a troubled world, we make such poor use of our affluence.
But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple.
Poverty" Pitt exclaimed "is no disgrace but it is damned annoying." In the contemporary United States it is not annoying but it is a disgrace.
There's no question that in my lifetime, the contrast between what I called private affluence and public squalor has become very much greater.
Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.
Almost every aspect of its (Federal Reserve) history should be approached with a discriminating disregard for what is commonly taught or believed.
Humor is richly rewarding to the person who employs it. It has some value in gaining and holding attention, but it has no persuasive value at all.
All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.
No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.
In the conventional wisdom of conservatives, the modern search for security is regularly billed as the greatest single threat to economic progress.
In a world where for pedagogic and other purposes a very large number of economists is required, an arrangement which discourages many of them from
The huge capacity to purchase submission that goes with any large sum of money, well, this we have. This is a power of which we should all be aware.
In central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much less.
The questions that are beyond the reach of economics-the beauty, dignity, pleasure and durability of life-may be inconvenient but they are important.
The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products.
The notion of a formal structure of command must be abandoned. It is more useful to think of the mature corporation as a series of concentric circles.
There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks.
One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.
SOME YEARS, like some poets,and politicians and some lovely women, are singled out for fame far beyond the common lot, and 1929 was clearly such a year.
Seaboard Air Line, which was thought by numerous innocents to provide a foothold in aviation, was another favorite, although, in fact, it was a railroad.
The present age of contentment will come to an end only when and if the adverse developments that it fosters challenge the sense of comfortable well-being
What was needed was a policy that increased the supply of money available for use and then ensured its use. Then the state of trade would have to improve.
That one never need to look beyond the love of money for explanation of human behavior is one of the most jealously guarded simplification of our culture.
Ideas are inherently conservative. They yield not to the attack of other ideas but to the massive onslaught of circumstance with which they cannot contend.
I would put primary emphasis on a good standard of living equitably distributed. It can't be equal, but one that eliminates the terrible cruelty of poverty.
The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.
We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.
Every corner of the public psyche is canvassed by some of the most talented citizens to see if the desire for some merchandisable product can be cultivated.
Men will look back in amusement at the pretence that once caused people to refer to General Dynamics and North American Aviation and AT&T as private business.
I talked about the consolidation of power in the hands of the corporate bureaucracy, as distinct from the stockholders. To this view, I still strongly adhere.
There is no name for all who participate in group decision-making or the organization which they form. I propose to call this organization the Technostructure.
There are days when the result is so bad that no fewer than five revisions are required. In contrast, when I'm greatly inspired, only four revisions are needed.
Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
Both we and the Soviets face the common threat of nuclear destruction and there is no likelihood that either capitalism or communism will survive a nuclear war.
There was the Missile Crisis, but one can't attribute to the [J.F.] Kennedy years anything like the problems that [Franklin] Roosevelt stood over and surmounted.
It's great to be with William Buckley, because you don't have to think. He takes a position and you automatically take the opposite one and you know you're right.
The overall effect of the rise of the industrial system is greatly to reduce the union as a social force. But it will not disappear or become entirely unimportant.
THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM requires that prices be under effective control. And it seeks the greatest possible influence over what buyers take at the established prices.
I accept the global complex and global trade more than do some of my liberal colleagues because I consider this a wise alternative to national tension and conflict.