“Everything is always decided for reasons other than the real merits of the case.”

When somebody persuades me I am wrong, I change my mind.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.

The power to become habituated to his surroundings and therefore to no longer be grateful for what is good in it is a marked characteristic of mankind and needs to be fought against if a person is to be happy.

The division of the spoils between the victors will also provide employment for a powerful office, whose doorsteps the greedy adventurers and jealous concession hunters of twenty or thirty nations will crowd and defile.

I am myself impressed by the great social advantages of increasing the stock of capital until it ceases to be scarce.

All production is for the purpose of ultimately satisfying a consumer.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

But my lord, when we addressed this issue a few years ago, didn’t you argue the other side?” He said, “That’s true, but when I get more evidence I sometimes change my mind. What do you do?

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.

The engine which drives enterprise is not thrift, but profit.

When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.

How long will it be necessary to pay City men so entirely out of proportion to what other servants of society commonly receive for performing social services not less useful or difficult?

The study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high order.

It is generally agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of Stock Exchanges.

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong – especially if one is promptly found out.

We are not sure we are right until we have made the best case possible for those who are wrong.

Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women.

We have known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting.

In that case Mr. Barrow, Mr. Gehrig is a very underpaid ballplayer.

It has perhaps always been the case that the waging of peace is the hardest form of leadership of all.

Think of how many are arrested for selling fake stock, for seducing 14-year-old girls in orphanages under their care, for arson, for murder.

I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do – and not only for operating, but for everything.

If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.