“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.”

Obstinacy can bring only a penalty and no reward.

It is astonishing what foolish things one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics.

It is a mistake to think that one limits one’s risk by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence.

The love of money as a possession. Will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.

There is no intrinsic reason for the scarcity of capital.

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.

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens.

One’s knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence.

The key to selecting the winner isn’t choosing the face you think is the most beautiful but rather the face other people will pick

Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.

To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol – a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in heart and cheerful of spirit.

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.

Conventional money is supposed to be doing everything. By adding in complementary currencies, you actually get different types of things and different outcomes from different complementary currencies.

The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way.

Only one fellow in ten thousand understands the currency question, and we meet him every day.

The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

Generosity is not only about money. There is more than one currency. Let your generosity be pervasive in life.

Before things are written down they don’t exist in quite the same way. The act of fixing them in words gives them a kind of currency that can be traded.

From now on, the pound abroad is worth 14 per cent or so less in terms of other currencies. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the Pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued.

Is a currency worth anything if no one wants it? We used to buy shoes in Italy. Remember?