When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.

The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.

The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism.

Ideology is like breath: you never smell your own.

The first essential for economists ... is to ... combat, not foster, the ideology which pretends that values which can be measured in terms of money are the only ones that ought to count.

The point of studying economics is so as not to be fooled by economists.

Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true.

Economic theorists should not make such a production about taking a rabbit out of a hat after having put the rabbit into the hat in full view of the audience.

The nature of technology depends very much upon what the public can be induced to put up with.

Unequal distribution of income is an excessively uneconomic method of getting the necessary saving done.

science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.

The unpleasant image of the feminists today resembles less the feminists themselves than the image fostered by the interests who so bitterly opposed the vote for women...

The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.

You can tell I'm not too bashful about some of my feelings.

Diversity is its most consistent characteristic....The characteristics of freely improvised music are established only by the sonic-musical identity of the person or persons playing it.

I don't think that success is the premise to what is good or bad.

As an author, I get paid to break my own heart on a regular basis.

To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

You are only a young talent, but we don't know how old your soul is.

I'm the thing that fundamentalist Christians cringe over.