Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.

Things that come from the private sector are in abundant supply; things that depend on the public sector are widely a problem. We're a world, as I said in The Affluent Society, of filthy streets and clean houses, poor schools and expensive television.

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.

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

If all else fails immortality can always be assured by adequate error.

Liberalism is, I think, resurgent. One reason is that more and more people are so painfully aware of the alternative.

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.