The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future.

Americans are apt to be unduly interested in discovering what average opinion believes average opinion to be.

Ideas shape the course of history.

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

It would not be foolish to contemplate the possibility of a far greater progress still.

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.

I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.

Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.

It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.

Most men love money and security more, and creation and construction less, as they get older.

For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.

If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking.

In the long run we are all dead.

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

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

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 day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems - the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.

There is no harm in being sometimes wrong - especially if one is promptly found out.

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

We will not have any more crashes in our time.

If I owe you a pound I have a problem but if I owe you a million the problem is yours.

The destruction of the inducement to invest by an excessive liquidity preference was the outstanding evil the prime impediment to the growth of wealth in the ancient and medieval worlds.

Economics is a very dangerous science.

Education the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.

If we have wealth, it will be protected from inflation and possibly even enhanced in value.

I'm a political scientist and I study these things, and I know that economic problems, with the rising unemployment and inflation and low productivity and so forth, were a factor in that election, in that defeat of President Carter.

They flooded liquidity in the marketplace but the mortgage rate is based much more on expectations of inflation. So if the average investor believes that there is inflation coming, they'll move that rate up.

Domestic inflation reflects domestic monetary policy.

We pay some price when necessary to bring down inflation but that price is temporary and is not large relative to the permanent gain from reduced inflation.

The Great Inflation of the 1970s destroyed faith in paper assets, because if you held a bond, suddenly the bond was worth much less money than it was before.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

Double-digit inflation is a terrible thing - and it got up to 14 or 15 percent on a monthly basis for a while, shortly after I became chairman of the Fed.

Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair.

The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

Deficits do not in themselves produce inflation, nor does a balanced budget assure a stable price level.

Congress has not raised the minimum wage since 1997. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years adjusted for inflation.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

Inflation is the crabgrass in your savings.