The disruptive powers of excessive national fecundity may have played a greater part in bursting the bonds of convention than either the power of ideas or the errors of autocracy.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

When the facts change, I change my mind.

It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

The biggest problem is not to let people accept new ideas, but to let them forget the old ones.

If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

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

Active-awareness combined with daily active-effort will compound to make a significant difference.

The windows of the houses - even if the house is ramshackle - are always beautiful because windows represent light!

Thank God forgiven me of my many sins.

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.

Too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of minor irritation they are able to cause to greater personalities than themselves.

the Lord gives good many things twice over; but he don't give ye a mother but once.

If we're going to be friends let's get one thing straight right now. I hate snoops.

I'm a professional. So before I published any novels, I'd always been writing stories.

Poems not only demand patience, they demand a kind of surrender. You must give yourself up to them. This is the real food for a poet: other poems, not meat loaf.

I got you a present." "Did you?" "It's a book of poetry--romancy stuff. I thought, 'How schmaltzy is that,' so it seemed like the thing. Then I screwed up and left it in my desk at work