It is a foregone opportunity that we could have a trillion dollars more of income for the United States if we were producing at capacity rather than falling so far short of it.

Well, a deficit reflects an imbalance between spending and revenue, and so narrowing it requires acting on one, the other or both.

Every day is like that, eight successive meetings on eight different topics, every one really important and interesting.

Something that's unsustainable, like a dysfunctional relationship, can go on longer than you expect, and then end faster and messier than you think.

Well, I think what we need to remember is that budget deficits can impede economic activity.

Social Security faces a long-term actuarial deficit, yes.

My mom is a very warm, typical sort of Jewish-mother type. And my dad has a somewhat, um, different personality.

Total borrowing has imploded. Private borrowing has collapsed. And, in effect, the Treasury Department is the last borrower left standing.

For example, I was privileged to be working at the White House under the Clinton administration and had not finished my Ph.D., and I thought I was the cat's meow.

There've been times where I wondered whether it was worth continuing in my own education.

It is better to have hope than to be without hope.

You have to be grateful for the small things, when any minute might be your last.

Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.

There is a creative solution to every problem. Every possibility holds the promise of abundance.

I love playing bad guys; they're always much more fun than the good guy.

The parents have not only to train their children: it is of at least equal importance that they should train themselves.

To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we say about nature.

think of nothing things think of wind

Many people one meets in life somehow think they know you simply because they're hanging out at the same counter-but they really don't know a thing about you.