“Senator, if I seem clear to you, you must have misunderstood me’.”

Indeed, better risk management may be the only truly necessary element of success in banking.

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

I cannot conceive of a politically feasible solution to this problem which will overdo cutting the deficit, where overdoing means harming the economy. It might be technically possible, but it is not realistic.

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.

If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

It’s easy to look at the vampires as a metaphor for any feared or misunderstood group.

What kind of failure was it? A failure because it’s misunderstood by others? A failure because you misunderstood it yourself?

Failure’s relative. I’ve always felt, even early on, if I lose the freedom to fail, something’s not right about that. It’s how you treat failure, too.

Miracle is a misunderstood reality.

I don’t look at her like she’s a bad girl. She just misunderstood sometime, she’s a little troubled, she’s a little dysfunctional. She’s a survivor.

I’d rather be loud and misunderstood than quiet and bored

Often because the attempt to practice it is misunderstood, discouraged, brought under attack, or made a target of willful abuse.