The Chicago Economics Department was in intellectual ferment, although the central issues of the 1930s were very different from those in later times. I had never before encountered minds of that quality at close quarters and they influenced me strongly.

I met my wife, Margaret L. Mack, at the University of Chicago. We were married in 1936. She died in 1970.

All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.

If you never miss a plane, you’re spending too much time at the airport.

Adam Smith had one overwhelmingly important triumph: he put into the center of economics the systematic analysis of the behavior of individuals pursuing their self-interest under conditions of competition.

Theories are not rejected by cirsumstantial evidence: it takes a theory to beat a theory.

It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation.