Complexity and obscurity have professional value - they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.

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

In the conventional wisdom of conservatives, the modern search for security is regularly billed as the greatest single threat to economic progress.

Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.

In the market economy the price that is offered is counted upon to produce the result that is sought.

It was not hard to persuade people that the market was sound; as always in such times they asked only that the dispiriting voices of doubt be muted and that there should be tolerably frequent expressions of confidence.

Some things were never meant to be recycled.