This is a world inhabited not by people who have to be persuaded to believe but by people who want an excuse to believe.

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated.

Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days do for a lifetime.

Consumer wants can have bizarre, frivolous, or even immoral origins, and an admirable case can still be made for a society that seeks to satisfy them. But the case cannot stand if it is the process of satisfying wants that create the wants.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations.