“All the political parties alike have their origins in past ideas and not in new ideas and none more conspicuously so than the Marxists .”

When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.

Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.

There is nothing so disastrous as a rational investment policy in an irrational world.

Conservatism leads nowhere; it satisfies no ideal.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

If we consistently act on the optimistic hypothesis, this hypothesis will tend to be realised; whilst by acting on the pessimistic hypothesis we can keep ourselves for ever in the pit of want.

Economists must leave to Adam Smith alone the glory of the Quarto, must pluck the day, fling pamphlets into the wind, write always sub specie temporis , and achieve immortality by accident, if at all.

The introduction of a substantial Government transfer tax on all transactions might prove the most serviceable reform available,with a view to mitigating the predominance of speculation in the United States.

When I find new information I change my mind; What do you do?

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.

Never in history was there a method devised of such efficacy for setting each country’s advantage at variance with its neighbours’ as the international gold (or, formerly, silver) standard.

Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant’s profit, we have begun to change our civilization.

I think that Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself is in many ways extremely objectionable.

One blames politicians, not for inconsistency but for obstinacy. They are the interpreters, not the masters, of our fate. It is their job, in fact, to register the fact accomplished.

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals.

At the origin of physics lay the strenuous clarity of the West-Archimedes and Euclid.

Our … reduceth to a single origin and relateth to a single , and maketh contraries to coincide so that there is one primal foundation both of origin and of end.

The most powerful words in English are ‘Tell me a story,’ words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.

To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.

I was a bright boy and I ought to make something out of myself… something else that would be a cut or two above my humble origins.

We need every human gift and cannot afford to neglect any gift because of artificial barriers of sex or race or class or national origin.

It seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its origin to the scattering of sunlight by the molecules of the water.

Quality is the responsibility of the top people. Its origin is in the boardroom. They are the ones who decide.