"Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant."

"Any consideration of the life and larger social existence of the modern corporate man... begins and also largely ends with the effect of one all-embracing force. That is organization — the highly structured assemblage of men, and now some women, of which he is a part. It is to this, at the expense of family, friends, sex, recreation and sometimes health and effective control of alcoholic intake, that he is expected to devote his energies."

"Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence."

"Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy—what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."

"Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs."

"Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom."

"Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths."

"In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability."

"You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too."

"Meetings are a great trap. … they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything."

"The imperatives of technology and organization, not the images of ideology, are what determine the shape of economic society....I am led to the conclusion that we are the servants in thought, as in action, of the machines we have created to serve us."

"People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development — the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example — they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first."

"Clearly the most unfortunate people are those who must do the same thing over and over again, every minute, or perhaps twenty to the minute. They deserve the shortest hours and the highest pay."

"Total physical and mental inertia are highly agreeable, much more so than we allow ourselves to imagine. A beach not only permits such inertia but enforces it, thus neatly eliminating all problems of guilt. It is now the only place in our overly active world that does."

"In the really hard cases you're choosing between the disastrous and the catastrophic, and it's hard to tell someone which one is which."

"Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable."

"There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting."

"Also present, as a kind of co-host, was the rector of the state university. He asked me if I knew the difference between capitalism and socialism. In capitalism man exploits man. In socialism it is just the reverse."

"You roll back the stones, and you find slithering things. That is the world of Richard Nixon."

"In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well."

"It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not."

"Liberal learning is both a safeguard against false ideas of freedom and a source of true ones."

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education."

"Self-respect cannot be hunted. It cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the beautiful, we have served it; knowing the truth, we have spoken it."

"Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer."

"There are certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled. Among these are many, I should say most, of the things that constitute the good life. All are essential to democracy. All are proof against its enemies."

"A Socrates in every classroom."

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease."

"There is time for everything."

"When you've exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You Haven't!"

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."

"I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom. Seventy-five of us worked twenty hours every day and slept only four hours — and thrived on it."

"I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt"

"I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God."

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

"I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun."

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless."

"I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it."

"Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I've stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don't know how to steal!"

"To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

"If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

"So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk."

"Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure."

"There is a great directing head of people and things — a Supreme Being who looks after the destinies of the world. I am convinced that the body is made up of entities that are intelligent and are directed by this Higher Power. When one cuts his finger, I believe it is the intelligence of these entities which heals the wound. When one is sick, it is the intelligence of these entities which brings convalescence. You know that there are living cells in the body so tiny that the microscope cannot find them at all. The entities that give life and soul to the human body are finer still and lie infinitely beyond the reach of our finest scientific instruments. When these entities leave the body, the body is like a ship without a rudder — deserted, motionless and dead."

"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."

"It is very beautiful over there!"

"We really haven't got any great amount of data on the subject, and without data how can we reach any definite conclusions? All we have — everything — favors the idea of what religionists call the "Hereafter." Science, if it ever learns the facts, probably will find another more definitely descriptive term."

"I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe."