The inborn instability of capitalism has been part of the history of the system for several hundred years.

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.

No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic.

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

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

Decision has greater virtue and force if taken after there has been eloquent dissent.

I've been a faithful reader of the great classical documents of economics, or tried to be. The first book in the field that I ever read was Principles of Economics by Alfred Marshall. I suppose subsequently I would have to pick out Keynes, Adam Smith, Marx.