The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously and sententiously about the relation of money supply to the price level-is easy for the unlearned and may even be aided by a mildly enfeebled intellect. The requirement that there be ability to master difficult models, including ones for which mathematical competence is required, is a highly useful screening device.

To see economic policy as a problem of choice between rival ideologies is the greatest error of our time.

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

The individual serves the planning system not by supplying it with savings and the resulting capital; he serves it far more by consuming its products.

Unemployment is rarely considered desirable except by those who have not experienced it.

We shall have a race of men who are strong on telemetry and space communications but who cannot read anything but a blueprint or write anything but a computer program.

Banking may well be a career from which no man really recovers.