“They have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.”

Life is not a multiple choice test, it’s an open-book essay exam.

And there would be an inventory pileup. And then – bam – businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production.

His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both.

Murphys law of economic policy’: Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed.

If you try to give an on-the-one-hand-or-the-other- hand answer, only one of the hands tends to get quoted.

In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters.

Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.

And the maestro surely wielded the chairman’s baton with extraordinary skill.

There is a kind of a cascading chain, … If one can’t sell, then that business doesn’t buy and that means the next business doesn’t sell, and the previous business doesn’t sell, and so on.

[These books] should be written in a way that they are serious, soberly argued, well researched, and make a respectable case-agree or disagree.

Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That’s what I look for.

The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one – America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

Any time you get two people in a room who disagree about anything, the time of day, there is a scene to be written. That’s what I look for.

A dear bargain is always disagreeable, particularly as it is a reflection upon the buyer’s judgment.

When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.

If you drink much from a bottle marked ‘poison’ it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later.