“Anything that we can do to raise personal savings is very much in the interest of this country.”

We can guarantee cash benefits as far out and at whatever size you like, but we cannot guarantee their purchasing power.

I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.

The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.

In an economy that already has lost some momentum, one must remain alert to the possibility that greater caution and weakening asset values in financial markets could signal or precipitate an excessive softening in household and business spending.

I believe that the general growth in large [financial] institutions have occurred in the context of an underlying structure of markets in which many of the larger risks are dramatically — I should say, fully — hedged.

But rules cannot substitute for character.

Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.

When trust is lost, a nation’s ability to transact business is palpably undermined.

It keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.

The number one problem in today’s generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.

I don’t think it’s possible for the Fed to end its easy-money policies in a trouble-free manner.

Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

The free lunch has still to be invented.

Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist.

The gut-feel of the 55-year old trader is more important than the mathematical elegance of the 25-year old genius.

Since I’ve become a central banker, I’ve learned to mumble with great incoherence.

It’s not easy for a mother and son to sing a duet. You can’t just sing about anything.

I thought anything might happen if I wasn’t vigilant. I didn’t eat. I didn’t go out. I didn’t want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul.

You must forge your own path for it to mean anything.

You haven’t done anything wrong. You just haven’t done anything, and that’s what’s wrong.

Suddenly we had become these people who didn’t drink anything but kale, who ended many of our conversations with tears, and for whom no future was guaranteed. It was kind of funny.

Don’t say anything about this to anybody. Any one would say that I am trying to play the good-natured philosopher. I am neither benefactor nor philosopher, but just a human being, and my charities are the pleasantest expense I have on these journeys.

I think I would cease to accomplish anything productive, would quickly dispense with all human contact, and would very well end up with a nasty case of arthritis in my over-used digits from constant gameplay.

More than anything I love being on stage and performing