No intelligence system can predict what a government will do if it doesn't know itself.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

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

Even in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many man in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them.

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability.

We shall have a race of men who are strong on telemetry and space communications but who cannot read anything but a blueprint or write anything but a computer program.

Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted.