“If we allow terrorism to undermine our freedom of action, we could reverse at least part of the palpable gains achieved by postwar globalization. It is incumbent upon us not to allow that to happen.”

History cannot be reduced to a set of statistics and probabilities.

Nor can private counterparties restrict supplies of gold, another commodity whose derivatives are often traded over-the-counter, where central banks stand ready to lease gold in increasing quantities should the price rise.

The companies could hire the educated workers they need. And those workers would compete with high-income people, driving more income equality.

I have one other issue I’d like to throw on the table. I hesitate to do it, but let me tell you some of the issues that are involved here.

Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices.

There is no safe store of value. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth.

At the risk of some oversimplification, if the skill composition of our work force meshed fully with the needs of our increasingly complex capital-stock, wage-skill differentials would be stable.

And she always has so much fun doing it. We make a good team.

I’ve been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I’ve never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I’m not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it’s got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.

As long as we issue fiat currency, I see no alternative to a legal tender law.

The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the Second World War.

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

The probability of ten consecutive heads is 0.1 percent; thus, when you have millions of coin tossers, or investors, in the end there will be thousands of very successful practitioners of coin tossing, or stock picking.

Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights.

I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy.

Productivity is notoriously difficult to predict.

Of course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don’t prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn’t prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

There is no religion of terrorism.

Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

Terror made me cruel.

What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?

Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.

Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes.

There’s no better way to learn something than to learn it in front of an audience. Your terror drives you.