“When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.”

It economics is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions.

In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

It is the duty of the long-term investor to endure great losses with equanimity.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

Gold is a relic from a time when government’s were less trustworthy in these matters (currency debasement) than they are now.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative – to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

Economics is a very dangerous science.

Like all his type, Newton was wholly aloof from women.

I was suffering from my chronic delusion that one good share is safer than ten bad ones, and I am always forgetting that hardly anyone else shares this particular delusion.

The forces of the nineteenth century have run their course and are exhausted.

What an extraordinary episode in the economic progress of man that age was which came to an end in August, 1914!

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize – not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years – the way the world thinks about economic problems.

The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.

The central principle of investment is to go contrary to the general opinion, on the grounds that if everyone agreed about its merits, the investment is inevitably too dear and therefore unattractive.

The Meanies want to take away your benefits, and the Weenies want to compromise with them.

You can’t always have the best team. It’s always a compromise.

There’s a lot of romance to sort of living by your own rules and sort of not subscribing to what society tells you to do, but society pushes back pretty strongly, so there’s a lot of compromise that goes with that.

It was a compromise. There was a sense that I could write my own memoirs, and Larry [Grobel] would help me down the line, or maybe not, maybe he was too close to me.

Adjust to your surroundings, because the world don’t wait for you.

You want the lyrics to match the melody, because if you are composing a song or recording a song, it’s cacophonous if they don’t match.

I like that Pilates compromises the mind and body. It’s not just about being able to run around the block a few times.

I will not compromise on language or content. At 15, people can handle the same language as me, they’re just as complicated as me and are very interested in thinking about important questions for the first time.