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.

The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.

Commencement oratory must eschew anything that smacks of partisan politics, political preference, sex, religion or unduly firm opinion. Nonetheless, there must be a speech: Speeches in our culture are the vacuum that fills a vacuum.

In economics it is a far, far wiser thing to be right than to be consistent

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

The ideas by which people . . . interpret their existence and in measure guide their behavior, were not forged in a world of wealth.

If we were not in Vietnam, all that part of the world would be enjoying the obscurity it so richly deserves.