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

The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.

The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.

When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover.

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.

In public administration good sense would seem to require that public expectation be kept at the lowest possible level in order to minimize eventual disappointment.