Unemployment is like a headache or a high temperature - unpleasant and exhausting but not carrying in itself any explanation of its cause.

Full employment does not mean literally no unemployment; that is to say, it does not mean that every man and woman in the country who is fit and free for work is employed productively every day of his or her working life ... Full employment means that unemployment is reduced to short intervals of standing by, with the certainty that very soon one will be wanted in one's old job again or will be wanted in a new job that is within one's powers.

Scratch a pessimist and you will often find a defender of privilege.

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.

The trouble in modern democracy is that men do not approach to leadership until they have lost the desire to lead anyone.

The state is or can be master of money, but in a free society it is master of very little else.

There is no inherent mechanism in our present system which can with certainty prevent competitive sectional bargaining for wages from setting up a vicious spiral of rising prices under full employment.