I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

I believe – we all pay taxes. I’m happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That’s going to bother you.

It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don’t riot when oil prices rise.

Gold is hoarded. It’s estimated that 95 percent of all gold ever mined is still around.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

Money is kind of a base subject. Like water, food, air and housing, it affects everything yet for some reason the world of academics thinks it’s a subject below their social standing.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.

We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics – trying to play a serious part in the world – to a culture that’s really entertainment-based.

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, ‚What for?‘ I said, ‚I’m going to buy some sugar.‘

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

I believe that economics is based on scarcity of markets. And it’s possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.

Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.

When you look at how much we spend on social programs in our country, it separates us from a lot of countries. In our country, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. But all of that comes at a cost.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy – well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I’m President, I never will.

Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

The true cost to the world of a burger is far greater than the money you hand over to buy it.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting ‚the rich‘ to pay ‚their fair share‘ is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

As you know, low demand and high supply means a drop in value of anything, including the dollar.