Macroeconomic adjustment programmes are tailor-made to the situation of the country concerned and no models or templates are used.

As a minister, you shouldn't imagine you know better than the technical experts in your ministry. In the end you're there to apply the political stamp of approval.

What can you do in order to save your own banks?

Banks should contribute to the real economy, make a positive contribution to economic growth.

If I finance a bank and I know if the bank will get in trouble I will be hit and I will lose money, I will put a price on that.

If I finance a bank and I know if the bank will get in trouble, I will be hit and I will lose money, I will put a price on that.

The power of nature is stronger than anything.

It is the greatest good to the greatest number which is the measure of right and wrong.

I spent many a summer early morning with the radio very low, half sleeping and half listening.

The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.

The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.

When asked if direct sales is a pyramid scheme. My reply is a corporation has only one person at the top.

There's always a tension in my world between the pragmatic and the practical and the theoretical. I have a very theoretical turn of mind, but I also like to test things in place.

Secrecy destroys accountability.

There's always a latent or inferred image in my writing. And I can almost always assume if I do a drawing that it will eventually have text.