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Life is amazingly unpredictable any 22-year-old who thinks they know where they will be in 10 years, much less in 30, is simply lacking imagination.

Ben Bernanke

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More quotes by Ben Bernanke

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.

Economics is a highly sophisticated field of thought that is superb at explaining to policymakers precisely why the choices they made in the past were wrong. About the future, not so much.

In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.

The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have - great universities. We have entrepreneurs.

It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.

Indeed, in general, healthy investment returns cannot be sustained in a weak economy, and of course it is difficult to save for retirement or other goals without the income from a job.

I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained. The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict.

I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences... essential to that institution's ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.

The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare.

To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.

Nobody really understands gold prices and I don't pretend to understand them either.

We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.

It takes about two and a half percent growth just to keep unemployment stable.

If you are asking me if I would advocate that the Chinese go to greater flexibility in their exchange rate, I certainly would.