“There are no easy choices. Easy choices are long gone.”

It’s hard to overemphasize how important Ford’s deregulation was. True, most of the benefits took years to unfold-rail freight rates, for example hardly budged at first.

Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to make money.

Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency…and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry.

Political decisions are never random and will always lose out to innovative alternatives.

Well, you probably will always believe there should be laws against fraud, and I don’t think there is any need for a law against fraud.

There’s an interesting question here because if the gold price broke in that context, the thermometer would not be just a measuring tool. It would basically affect the underlying psychology.

Whatever you tax you get less of.

The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

These days, even out of office, I still read economic reports.

Now, I only play very occasionally, and in fact, more piano than clarinet or sax.

No matter how skillful the trading scheme, over the long haul, abnormal returns are sustained only through abnormal exposure to risk.

Need to consider not only the most likely future path for the economy but also the distribution of possible outcomes about that path.

If prices go down, we will have problems – problems in the sense of spillover to other areas.

I was raising the question on the side with Governor Mullins of what would happen if the Treasury sold a little gold in this market.

The only effective regulation lies in the propensity of customers to choose alternatives, of investors to move their funds elsewhere and of labour to acquire technical skills’.

Before I met Ayn Rand, I was a logical positivist, and accordingly,

The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation,” she said. “Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed.

The right choice is hardly ever the easy choice.

It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture by allowing one colour to dominate, or by muting all the colours.

I wish the music business was a much easier thing, but you know what? Nothing easy is worth anything. So it is what it is.

Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses.

Sometimes it’s easy to have ideas, but somebody has to find a way to do it. Often those responsible for finding a way don’t have the idea.

It’s not easy to work with me, I recognize that. It’s not easy if those people aren’t as perfectionistic as I am.

Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.