Since I've become a central banker, I've learned to mumblewithgreatcoherence† If Iseemundulyclear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

-Greenspan, Alan
  Address to Congress, Sep. Quotedby Jonathan Marshall in the San Francisco Chronicle, 9  Jun1995.

A'sound' banker, alas! is not one who foresees danger and avoidsit, but onewho, whenheisruined, isruined in a conventional and orthodox wayalong with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.

-Keynes (of Tilton),John Maynard, 1st Baron
Essays in Persuasion.

Inside every banker, even the governor of the Bank of England, there lies a gambling streak. In me, they recognise one of their own kind.

-Kristol, Irving
Quoted in Michael Wilding and Pamela Wilcox  Apple Sauce (1982).

Bankers'genes were Wall St. genes, especially in the big cities. If the banks were conservative just now [1955], it was because bankers still awoke in the middle of the night, trembling and sweaty with thoughts of the Crash. But intimeanewgenerationwouldtake over: ambitious, overcompetitive young men to whom1929 would be merelya date on a page; such menwould sever theroots of memory as if with an ax, not realizing that those tendrils were also the rudder cables.

-Thomas, Michael M
  The Ropespinner Conspiracy.