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.

Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.

It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.

The modern corporation must manufacture not only goods but the desire for the goods it manufactures.

Some things were never meant to be recycled.