-
Trickle-down theory—the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.
The Culture of Contentment (1992) -
The greater the wealth, the thicker will be the dirt.
The Affluent Society (1958) ch. 18 -
A wrong decision isn't forever; it can always be reversed. The losses from a delayed decision are forever; they can never be retrieved.
A Life in our Times (1981) ch. 21 -
We do not experience and thus we have no measure of the disasters we prevent.
A Life in our Times (1981) ch. 26 -
Meetings are a great trap…However, they are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
Ambassador's Journal (1969) 22 April 1961 -
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
speech to President Kennedy, 2 March 1962; see Bismarck -
The modern conservative is…engaged…in one of man's oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
in Harper's Magazine March 1964
Oxford Essential Quotations