The considerations upon which expectations of prospective yields are based are partly existing facts which we can assume to be known more or less for certain, and partly future events which can only be forecasted with more or less confidence.

A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. It is necessarily part of the business of a banker to maintain appearances, and to confess a conventional respectability, which is more than human. Life-long practices of this kind make them the most romantic and the least realistic of men.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.