You can actually make a lot of money and do a lot of good in the world. I don't see those things as being in opposition to one another. I never have.

I think my wife would take objection to any characterization of me as perfect.

As an economist, I'm aware that life is full of trade offs.

Disciplined governments do not engage in the economic equivalent of binge eating followed by crash dieting.

In Jamaica, you're never very far away from people who don't have very much, and in Wilmette, pretty much everybody had a lot.

I think that whether you're on the right or on the left as an economist or as a policy maker, every serious analyst I know agrees that at some point you have to deal with entitlements.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

I still have enough faith in language to believe that if I place enough words next to each other on the page, they will start to speak with sounds of their own.

On Writing: "A multitude of improbabilities can be forgiven as long as enough plausibility has been established.

A lot of kids, when they go to church, they don't really pay much attention to what they're saying or whatever.

The Wall will stand for a hundred years.

The understanding of some men is clear, that of others brilliant. The former illumines its surroundings; the latter obscures them.

I smoke a pipe abroad, because To all cigars I much prefer it, And as I scorn you social laws, My choice has nothing to deter it.

The only ideals allowed are healthy ones - those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.

The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental law.