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

Significantly opening up immigration to skilled workers solves two problems.

If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.

Then fear hits, and it comes down very sharply. When I started to look at that.

If we are to remain preeminent in transforming knowledge into economic value, America’s system of higher education must remain the world’s leader in generating scientific and technological breakthrough, and in meeting the challenge to educate workers.

I’m a better economist than I was a sax player.

I’m a plain soap kind of guy.

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.

Reality is not always probable, or likely.

We can never achieve absolute truth but we can live hopefully by a system of calculated probabilities.

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.

The probability that we face global warming caused by fossil fuels is now so overwhelming that it is legitimate to doubt the motives of those who deny it

What Probability there is, that those Events should be rather be owing to the one than to the other.

The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

When asked what he meant by a miracle: Oh, anything with a probability of less than 20%.

The variety of disasters that can occur to us is so enormous that we tend to preserve our sanity by not thinking about most of them.”