The link between rational individual behavior and collectively desirable outcomes is extremely tenuous.

The most glaring deficiency in traditional economic models is that they completely ignore the role of context in evaluation.

Life is graded on the curve. It's not how big you are, how strong you are, how smart you are. It's how good you are at the things that count relative to the people around you.

No society has ever succeeded without a decent government.

If government is inevitable, the challenge is to come up with the most effective one possible.

Pass down values every day through your actions, your words and your time with your kids.

If the search is for examples that contradict the predictions of standard economic models, a good rule of thumb is to start in France.

In short both the things we feel we need and the things available for us to buy depend largely—beyond some point, almost entirely—on the things that others choose to buy.

The most common mistake we make as teachers is attempting to tell our students too much.

As economists have long noted, the puzzle is not that so few people vote, it's that so many do. After all, no individual's vote has ever tipped the balance in a presidential election.

When people bump up against one another in the course of pursuing their goals, it is in everyone's interest to resolve any resulting problems in the least costly ways possible.

Nobody knows you.You don't know yourself.And I, who am half in love with you, What am I in love with?My own imaginings?

You think you know me, I've barely peeled back one layer.

The plan, a memory of the future, tries on reality to see if it fits.

Change can be frightening, and the temptation is often to resist it. But change almost always provides opportunities - to learn new things, to rethink tired processes, and to improve the way we work.

Out of nothing can come, and nothing can become nothing.

The GSEs are adequately capitalized. They are in no danger of failing.

What was given to us by the past is adapted to the possibilities of the future.

The worst thing of all is standing by when folks are doing something wrong.

Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.

It is the characteristic of a weak and diseased mind to fear the unfamiliar.