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

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.

If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.

Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.

We will not have any more crashes in our time.

Chess is a cure for headaches.

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 human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.

The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.

Whenever you save five shillings you put a man out of work for a day.

A speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.

It is the long-term investor, who will in practice come in for the most criticism… For it is the essence of his behavior that he should be eccentric, unconventional, and rash in the eyes of average opinion.

Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.

Perhaps a day might come when there would be at last be enough to go round, and when posterity could enter into the enjoyment of our labors.

But rational thoughts lead only to rational thoughts, whereas irrational thoughts lead to new experiences.

Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational.

When a planner speaks of implementing goals rationally.

Philosophy had supplied Socrates with convictions in which he had been able to have rational, as opposed to hysterical, confidence when faced with disapproval.

Man has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.

If you’re rational and logical, they argue their case rationally and logically. If you’re loyal and faithful, they turn those against you.

For me, a totalitarian parody of a would-be rational learning process.

It demanded a new rationale for belief.