Capitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied.

In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.

There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . .

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

I feel very angry when I think of brilliant, or even interesting, women whose minds are wasted on a home. Better have an affair. It isn't permanent and you keep your job.

Change comes not from men and women changing their minds, but from the change from one generation to the next.

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.