Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.

It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes a bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done.

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians.