vagaries quotes

He wanted to be independent of the vagaries of butlers.

- Dean Gooderham Acheson
  Of  Winston Churchill, who liked to keep a champagne bottle next to his plate. Sketches from Life of Men I Have Known.

It might have been supposed that competition between expert professionals, possessing judgement and knowledge beyond that of the average private investor, would correct the vagaries of the ignorant individual left to himself. It happens, however, that the energies and skills of the professional investor and speculator are mainly occupied elsewhere. For most of these persons are, in fact, largely concerned, not with making superior long-term forecasts of the probable yield on an investment over its whole life, but with foreseeing changes in the conventional bias of valuation a short time ahead of the general public† This battle of wits to anticipate the basis of conventional valuation a few months hence, rather than the prospective yield of an investment over a long term of years, does not even require gulls amongst the public to feed the maws of the professional; it can be played by professionals amongst themselves.

-John Maynard, 1st Baron Keynes (of Tilton)
  The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.