In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.

Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design . . . The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

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. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

Almost every aspect of its (Federal Reserve) history should be approached with a discriminating disregard for what is commonly taught or believed.

People are the common denominator of progress; no improvement is possible with unimproved people.

One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.

If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition.