In numerous years following the war, the Federal Government ran a heavy surplus. It could not (however) pay off its debt, retire its securities, because to do so meant there would be no bonds to back the national bank notes. To pay off the debt was to destroy the money supply.

The power of the corporate bureaucracy - the power of technostructure (a term that did not take off) - is something to which I still adhere.

Technology, under all circumstances, leads to planning; in its higher manifestations it may put the problems of planning beyond the reach of the industrial firm. Technological compulsions, and not ideology or political will, will require the firm to seek the help and protection of the state.

A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved.

I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, and the schools so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut.

In the affluent society, no useful distinction can be made between luxuries and necessities.

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.