Great Throughts Treasury

"I have taken pains to show that financial markets left to their own devices don't tend towards an equilibrium that assures an optimum allocation of resources. The theories of efficient markets and rational expectations don't stand up to critical examination."

"I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs. "

"Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. "

"The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it's possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic."

"A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy."

"A global society does not mean a global state. To abolish the existence of states is neither feasible nor desirable; but insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions."

"Americans, sadly, are now victims who have turned into perpetrators. Indeed, since September 2001, the war on terror has claimed more innocent victims than those terrorist attacks. This fact is unrecognized at home because the victims of the war on terror are not Americans. But the rest of the world does not draw the same distinction, and world opinion has turned against America."

"An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others."

"An open society such as ours is based on the recognition that our understanding of reality is inherently imperfect. Nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. As the philosopher Karl Popper has shown, the ultimate truth is not attainable even in science. All theories are subject to testing and the process of replacing old theories with better ones never ends."

"As I like to put it, we have hit pay dirt. The effort to cure the resource curse is a good example of what private foundations working with NGOs can accomplish."

"An orderly decline of the dollar is desirable."

"Balanced multi-manager hedge fund."

"An open society is always in danger. It must constantly reaffirm its principles in order to survive. We are being sorely tested, first by 9/11 and then by President Bush's response. To pass the test we must face reality instead of finding solace in false certainties. This election transcends party loyalties. Our future as an open society depends on resisting the Siren's song."

"At present, the developed countries condescend to the developing ones."

"As the housing boom cools off, there will be a shortfall in demand (which will) affect the global economy."

"Because the international banking system must also be at fault."

"Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so anymore because we are bogged down in Iraq. Iran and North Korea are moving ahead with their nuclear programs at full speed and our hand in dealing with them has been greatly weakened."

"Bush's war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties."

"But recently we have seen financial markets sometimes move more like a wrecking ball, knocking over one economy after another."

"Challenge the very concept of the 'war on terror.'"

"Each state is guided by its interests, not by some nebulous concept of common interest. And not many states are even democratic. So, you have a problem with the concept between international institutions and sovereignty. To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states."

"Boom-bust processes are asymmetric in shape: a long, gradually accelerating boom is followed by a short and sharp bust. Consequently, most of the credit contraction can be expected to occur in the near term. Currency movements tend to overshoot because of trend-following speculation, and we can observe similar trend-following behavior in stock, commodity and real estate markets, of which Dutch Tulip Mania was the prototype."

"Clinton has a concrete goal of getting China into the WTO, his near-term agenda is to get China in."

"Esperanto was a very useful language, because wherever you went, you found someone to speak with."

"Economic theory is devoted to the study of equilibrium positions. The concept of equilibrium is very useful. It allows us to focus on the final outcome rather than the process that leads up to it. But the concept is also very deceptive. It has the aura of something empirical: since the adjustment process is supposed to lead to an equilibrium, an equilibrium position seems somehow implicit in our observations. That is not true. Equilibrium itself has rarely been observed in real life — market prices have a notorious habit of fluctuating."

"Everybody says that I have a lot of power. But what does that power consist of?... Can I influence governments? I am beginning to be able to."

"Fundamental analysis seeks to establish how underlying values are reflected in stock prices, whereas the theory of reflexivity shows how stock prices can influence underlying values. One provides a static picture, the other a dynamic one."

"Fabian Socialists, heat the world up so they can remold it."

"George W. Bush revels in being a war president. His campaign is shamelessly exploiting the fears generated by 9/11. Vice President Cheney is conjuring mushroom clouds into our cities. But fear is a bad counselor; we must resist it wherever it comes from. President Roosevelt had the right idea when he said, We have nothing to fear but Fear itself."

"He is actually doing the right thing for himself because he is preserving himself in power, and he puts himself in a position where he can bail out his cronies who are in financial difficulties, including his son and so on,"

"Faith plays an important role in an open society. Exactly because our understanding is imperfect, we cannot base our decisions on knowledge alone. We need to rely on beliefs, religious or otherwise, to help us make decisions. But we must remain open to the possibility that we may be wrong so that we can correct our mistakes. Otherwise, we are bound to be wrong."

"Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones."

"How good are markets in predicting real-world developments? Reading the record, it is striking how many calamities that I anticipated did not in fact materialise. Financial markets constantly anticipate events, both on the positive and on the negative side, which fail to materialise exactly because they have been anticipated. It is an old joke that the stock market has predicted seven of the last two recessions. Markets are often wrong."

"Happiest year of my life, the German occupation."

"How can we escape from the trap that the terrorists have set us? Only by recognizing that the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. We must, of course, protect our security; but we must also correct the grievances on which terrorism feeds. Crime requires police work, not military action."

"I advocate an alliance of democratic states, with a dual purpose. One, to promote what I call open society. I talk about an alliance of open societies which would first foster the development of open societies within individual countries, because there's a lot that needs to be done in that effort. And secondly, to establish basic international law and international institutions that you need for a global, open society. So that's my sort of broad concept. Now, I have not worked out the details, because I don't think it's for me to work out the details. It's for them to work out the details."

"I am not a Zionist, nor am I am a practicing Jew, but I have a great deal of sympathy for my fellow Jews and a deep concern for the survival of Israel."

"I argue that it's appropriate for people to pursue their profit motive in business. If you want to change that, you're going against human nature. But when it comes to setting the rules or creating the institutions, then you should have the general interest at heart, even if it conflicts with your personal interest."

"I commissioned two political experts to advise me about what I could do to oppose the re-election of President Bush."

"I don't think you will see the Fed jumping to interest rates,"

"I believe that market prices are always wrong in the sense that they present a biased view of the future. But distortion works in both directions: not only do market participants operate with a bias, but their bias can also influence the course of events. For instance, the stock market is generally believed to anticipate recessions, it would be more correct to say that it can help to precipitate them. Thus I replace the assertion that markets are always right with two others: I) Markets are always biased in one direction or another; II) Markets can influence the events that they anticipate. As long as the bias is self-reinforcing, expectations rise even faster than stock prices. Nowhere is the role of expectations more clearly visible than in financial markets. Buy and sell decisions are based on expectations about future prices, and future prices, in turn are contingent on present buy and sell decisions."

"I contend that financial markets never reflect the underlying reality accurately; they always distort it in some way or another and the distortions find expression in market prices."

"I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society."

"I did spearhead the introduction of the Internet in countries like Russia, the former Soviet Union, because it is a very open system of communication. I think it has great potential for self-organization and self-organization is very much at the heart of an open society. The Internet is sort of a medium of open society. However, it can also be a medium of control and so we have to be careful it doesn't destroy you."

"I expect by '07 there will be a significant decline in U.S. consumer spending, and I don't see what will take its place, because it's so important as the motor of the world economy."

"I find the idea that you can introduce democracy by military force a very quaint idea. Moreover, if I wanted to choose a testing ground for doing it, Iraq would be the last nation I would choose."

"I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it."

"I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society. When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society."

"I hardly knew the man's name... He really invented me. He needed me for his political purposes, so I'm a figment of his imagination."

"I have been crisscrossing the country for the last three weeks arguing against the reelection of President Bush. I feel strongly that he has led us in the wrong direction. The invasion of Iraq was a colossal blunder and only by rejecting the President at the polls can we hope to escape from the quagmire in which we find ourselves."