Volcker's Quotes

#1. Before Volcker's speech, bonds had been conservative investments, into which investors put their savings when they didn't fancy a gamble in the stock market. After Volcker's speech, bonds became objects of speculation, a means of creating wealth rather than merely storing it.

Michael Lewis

#2. After Volcker's speech, bonds became objects of speculation, a means of creating wealth rather than merely storing it. Overnight the bond market was transformed from a backwater into a casino.

Michael Lewis

#3. I am suspicious of the idea of a new paradigm, to use that word, an entirely new structure of the economy.

Paul A. Volcker

#4. Cooper was my road roommate, and also happened to be the first African American player drafted by a National Basketball Association team.

Bob Cousy

#5. What's the subject of life - to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life.

Paul A. Volcker

#6. A nation's exchange rate is the single most important price in its economy; it will influence the entire range of individual prices, imports and exports, and even the level of economic activity. So it is hard for any government to ignore large swings in its exchange rate ...

Paul Volcker

#7. Well, by the standards of a lot of countries, by Latin American standards, it wasn't so bad.

Paul A. Volcker

#8. Good for you, Big Brother! Nothing says Merry Christmas like Hi, Dad! I'm gay!

J.M. Colail

#9. I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth - one shred of evidence.

Paul Volcker

#10. Had Volcker never pushed through his radical change in policy, the world would be many bond traders and one memoir the poorer.

Michael Lewis

#11. And in my own pastoral and personal Christian experience, I can say that I've never known a man or woman who came to spiritual maturity except through discipline. Godliness comes through discipline.

Donald S. Whitney

#12. It's a whole different attitude toward public service than it once was. I tell you, we can all sit around in our old age and moan about it, but I think the administrative processes and the management effectiveness of the federal government are terrible!

Paul Volcker

#13. It was probably a mistake to allow gold to rise so high.

Paul Volcker

#14. Many of us who have experienced psychedelics feel very much that they are sacred tools. They open spiritual awareness.

Stanislav Grof

#15. Every tattoo should tell a story of the person inside. Each is open to interpretation to the viewer. No one has to know the real meaning if you don't want them to.

Charisse Spiers

#16. You could not buy a house in those days without just assuming that the house was not only a place to live, but it was a good investment, because it was going to keep up with inflation or get ahead of inflation, and it was just - that was America.

Paul A. Volcker

#17. Less emphasis on inventories, I think, may tend to dampen business cycles, because business cycles are typically in the grasp of inventory cycles and heavy industry cycles.

Paul A. Volcker

#18. It was the biggest inflation and the most sustained inflation that the United States had ever had.

Paul A. Volcker

#19. After the Volcker Fund collapsed, I got another grant from the Lilly Endowment to do a history of the U.S., which I worked on from 1962-66. The original idea was to take the regular facts and put a libertarian assessment on everything.

Murray Rothbard

#20. I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by, The gray spires of Oxford Against a pearl-gray sky. My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.

Winifred Mary Letts

#21. If, at the end of the day, we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes.

Paul Volcker

#22. Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve (1979-87): The worst financial investment I ever made was spending so much time in government. The most satisfying personal investment I ever made was spending so much time in government, frustrating as it could be.

Anonymous

#23. The great end of art is to strike the imagination with the power of a soul that refuses to admit defeat even in the midst of a collapsing world.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#24. The dead do not harm us, only the alive.

Rosie Thomas

#25. My four golden principles are more important now than ever: take it one step at a time; approach the matter dispassionately; avoid a rush to judgement; confide in nobody until there is hard evidence.

Robert Harris

#26. Double-digit inflation is a terrible thing - and it got up to 14 or 15 percent on a monthly basis for a while, shortly after I became chairman of the Fed.

Paul A. Volcker

#27. By the time I became chairman and there was more of a feeling of urgency, there was a willingness to accept more forceful measures to try to deal with the inflation.

Paul A. Volcker

#28. The standard of living of the average American has to decline.

Paul Volcker

#29. The speed of communication, the speed of information transfer, the cheapness of communication, the ease of moving things around the world are a difference in kind as well as degree.

Paul A. Volcker

#30. When people begin anticipating inflation, it doesn't do you any good anymore, because any benefit of inflation comes from the fact that you do better than you thought you were going to do.

Paul A. Volcker

#31. I had to go to Sunday school once or twice in my life, and that's where I commented someplace on hearing.

John C. Hawkes

#32. Time and silence are the most luxurious things today.

Tom Ford

#33. When I hear complaints about less liquidity, remember there is such a thing as too much liquidity.

Paul Volcker

#34. The only thing useful banks have invented in 20 years is the ATM.

Paul Volcker

#35. Volcker relied on public opinion, integrity, and persistence to overcome the political pressure to finance government spending the easy way, by printing money rather than by taxation.

William L. Silber

#36. If I go to an awards ceremony, I wear a suit, of course I do. I am proud to be there. If there are young kids looking at pictures of me, I want them to feel that they should long for the opportunity to go somewhere really smart and wear a beautiful suit, rather than to reject that.

Tinie Tempah

#37. The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.

Zadie Smith