“If you owe your bank manager a thousand pounds, you are at his mercy. If you owe him a million pounds, he is at your mercy.”

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.

The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.

Experience shows that what happens is always the thing against which one has not made provision in advance.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

It is investment, i.e. the increased production of material wealth in the shape of capital goods, which alone increases national wealth.

Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

Never try to fix other people. God does not need to do a bank shot off your lips.

I don’t think any rapper can go back. You can be a car salesman, a bank teller – I mean, really good jobs, and people are still gonna look at you and be like, ‘You used to rap; what happened?’

After money in the bank, a grudge is the next best thing.

I know of only three people who really understand money. A professor at another university. One of my students. And a rather junior clerk at the Bank of England.

Any time three New Yorkers get into a cab without an argument, a bank has just been robbed.

A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.

If there was a payment to the bank due, and we needed shoes, she’d get the shoes, and then deal with them guys at the bank. I don’t mean she wouldn’t pay the bank, but the children always came first.