The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days last a lifetime.

The happiest time in any man's life is just after the first divorce.

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great—a little understood thing.

Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.