In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.

Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does.

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

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

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

If a man didn't make sense, the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation, for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity.

There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.