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.

Economists, on the whole, think well of what they do themselves and much less well of what their professional colleagues do.

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.

No ethic is as ethical as the work ethic.

Economics is a subject profoundly conducive to cliche, resonant with boredom. On few topics is an American audience so practiced in turning off its ears and minds. And none can say that the response is ill advised.

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

No hungry man who is also sober can be persuaded to use his last dollar for anything but food.