Examine the record of history, recollect what has happened within the circle of your own experience, consider with attention what has been the conduct of almost all the great unfortunate, either in private or public life, whom you may have either read of, or heard of, or remember; and you will find that the misfortunes of by far the greater part of them have arisen from their not knowing when they were well, when it was proper for them to sit still and be contented.

– Adam Smith

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Much has been written about panics and manias, much more than with the most outstretched intellect we are able to follow or conceive; but one thing is certain, that at particular times a great deal of stupid people have a great deal of stupid money. ... At intervals, from causes which are not to the present purpose, the money of these people – the blind capital, as we call it, of the country – is particularly large and craving; it seeks for someone to devour it, and there is a ‘plethora’; it finds someone, and there is ‘speculation’; it is devoured, and there is ‘panic.’

– Walter Bagehot

‘Essay on Edward Gibbon’

I permit myself to note in this connection the words said to me by a very high personage of the Republic: ‘I know my country well. It is capable of supporting anything with calm except a financial crisis.’

– Raymond Philippe

Un point d’histoire: Le drame financier de 1924–28

I can feel it coming, S.E.C. or not, a whole new round of disastrous speculation, with all the familiar stages in order – blue-chip boom, then a fad for secondary issues, then an over-the-counter play, then another garbage market in new issues, and finally the inevitable crash. I don’t know when it will come, but I can feel it coming, and damn it, I don’t know what to do about it.

– Bernard J. Lasker

Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange in 1970,
quoted in 1972 in John Brooks, The Go-Go Years