Alan Greenspan

It's only when the markets are perceived to have exhausted themselves on the downside that they turn. Trying to prevent them from going down just merely prolongs the agony.

I wasn't able to do much reading when I was chairman of the Reserve Board. The workload was too large, and the luxury of reading was not available to me. So I caught up a good deal when I left office.

I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

There is a huge number of people outside our borders who would love to come here. In fact, many of them come here, get well educated, and then are required to leave... This is a factor in income inequality.

The person I liked the best was Gerald R. Ford. He was the most decent man in politics I ever had any relationships with.

Increased jobs are the consequence of increased trade. Increasing jobs more than output implies a fall in productivity and standards of living. That surely cannot be our goal.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading. So I made an economic decision, and it turned out the best judgment I ever made in my life.

I always believed in animal spirits. It's not their existence that is new. It's the fact that they are not random events, but actually replicate in-bred qualities of human nature which create those animal spirits.

The purpose of a politician is to be a leader. A politician has to lead. Otherwise he's just a follower.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.

The culture of Greece is not the same as the culture of Germany, and to fuse them into a single unit is extremely difficult.