You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.

Economics exists to make astrology look respectable.

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.

World War II revealed two of the enduring features of the Keynesian Revolution. One was the moral difference between spending for welfare and spending for war. During the Depression very modest outlays for the unemployed seemed socially debilitating, economically unsound. Now expenditures many times greater for weapons and soldiers were perfectly safe. It's a difference that still persists.

The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

Of late I have searched diligently to discover the advantages of age, and there is, I have concluded, only one. It is that lovely women treat your approaches with understanding rather than with disdain.