"Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion."

"To give money to a woman - and here I must speak as a man - is to deny her special quality, her irreplaceability, and reduce her unique amiability to a commodity. Money takes away her name, while transforming her lover into a nameless customer of a market of appetites."

"The world dominion of western thought, forms of organisation, technology and military force is not God-given, nor eternal, nor greatly appreciated by the rest of the world."

"If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside."

"Nothing is impossible; there are ways that lead to everything, and if we had sufficient will we should always have sufficient means. It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible."

"These heroes of finance are like beads on a string when one slips off, all the rest follow."

"I think Captain Cousteau might be the father of the environmental movement."

"The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change."