No society ever seems to have succumbed to boredom. Man has developed an obvious capacity for surviving the pompous reiteration of the commonplace.

I was in charge of price controls in World War II and had a ceiling on overall prices. Everybody who was subject to general maximum price regulation wanted an exception and went to Congress to persuade a Congressman, or a group of people on the Hill, that I was being a menace to their industry.

Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed. In the absence of new developments, old ones may seem very impressive for quite a long while.

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is.

Monetary policy suffers from the unfortunate absence of any occult effect. It has long been clear that economic management...would be greatly facilitated if resort could occasionally be had to witchcraft.

I would put primary emphasis on a good standard of living equitably distributed. It can't be equal, but one that eliminates the terrible cruelty of poverty.

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.