“Obstinacy can bring only a penalty and no reward.”

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.

By this means (fractional reserve banking) government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.

I’d rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong.

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

The Economic Problem, the problem of want and poverty and the economic struggle between classes and nations, is nothing but a frightful muddle, a transitory and unnecessary muddle.

It is a good thing to make mistakes so long as you’re found out quickly.

The considerations upon which expectations of prospective yields are based are partly existing facts which we can assume to be known more or less for certain, and partly future events which can only be forecasted with more or less confidence.

Well, when I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with new information?

The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity-preference was the outstanding evil, the prime impediment to the growth of wealth, in the ancient and medieval worlds.

It would be foolish, in forming our expectations, to attach great weight to matters which are very uncertain.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.

It’s not bringing in the new ideas that’s so hard; it’s getting rid of the old ones.

Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel – these are things which should in their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible and above all let finance be primarily national.

Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.

Men will not always die quietly.

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.

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.