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

The numeric system was invented to help man to put order in the chaos of the world.

It is investment, i.e. the increased production of material wealth in the shape of capital goods, which alone increases national wealth.

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.

I do not mean to impugn the social justice and social expediency of the redistribution of incomes aimed at by N.I.R.A. and by the various schemes for agricultural restriction. The latter, in particular, I should strongly support in principle. But too much emphasis on the remedial value of a higher price-level as an object in itself may lead to serious misapprehension as to the part which prices can play in the technique of recovery. The stimulation of output by increasing aggregate purchasing power is the right way to get prices up; and not the other way round.

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.