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.
