"Six Lectures on Political Economy"

“The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them.”

“Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth.”

“Profile from History of Economic Thought”

“And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight.”

“The system becomes more coherent as it is further extended. The elements which we require for explaining a new class of facts are already contained in our system. Different members of the theory run together, and we have thus a constant convergence to unity. In false theories, the contrary is the case.”

“It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.”