[Franklin Delano] Roosevelt was the central world figure in the two great disasters of this century - the Great Depression and World War II. By contrast, JFK came in relatively peaceful, agreeable times.

According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.

All crises have involved debt that, in one fashion or another, has become dangerously out of scale in relation to the underlying means of payment.

Then came the second Amsterdam discovery, although the principle was known elsewhere. Bank deposits...did not need to be left idly in the bank. They could be lent. The bank then got interest. The borrower then had a deposit that he could spend. But the original deposit still stood to the credit of the original depositor. That too could be spent. Money, spendable money, had been created. Let no one rub his or her eyes. It's still being done-every day. The creation of money by a bank is as simple as this, so simple, I've often said, that the mind is slightly repelled.

If you get a reputation for being honest, you have 95 percent of the competition already beat.

The shortcomings of economics are not original error but uncorrected obsolescence. The obsolescence has occurred because what is convenient has become sacrosanct. Anyone who attacks such ideas must seem to be a trifle self-confident and even aggressive. The man who makes his entry by leaning against an infirm door gets an unjustified reputation for violence. Something is to be attributed to the poor state of the door.

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.