Deciding under uncertainty is bad enough, but deciding under an illusion of certainty is catastrophic.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government.

Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.

Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.

Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.

DNA has been aptly described as the first three-dimensional Xerox machine.

The world moves into the future as a result of decisions, not as a result of plans. Plans are significant only insofar as they affect decisions.

If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.

There is no such thing as economics, only social science applied to economic problems.

If you can't take care of yourself, you can't take care of someone else.

The President has a wonderful sense of humor, which is one of the reasons it is so much fun to work for him.

The number one problem that keeps people from winning in the United States today is lack of belief in themselves.

Vanity is easily forgiven, for we are all vain, and even as we laugh at the weakness of others we feel that their vanity has touched the responding chord of our own.

We have a choice. We can shape our future, or let events shape it for us. And if we want to succeed, we can't fall back on the stale debates and old divides that won't move us forward.

An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general.

The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible.

The neurotic's strongest fantasy is that he has no fantasies. The real is very real to him, the unreal even more so.

Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning.

James Joyce - an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.