1.The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the business of America， some of its most honest and most necessary and most respectable business. I am thinking not only of advertising and pubic relations and political rhetoric, but of all the activities which purport to inform and gemfort and improve and educate and elevate us: the work of our best journalists, our most enterprising book publishers, our most energetic manufacturers and merchandisers, our most successful entertainers, our best guides to world travel,and our most influential leaders in foreign relations. Our every effort to satisfy our extravagant expectations simply makes them more extravagant and makes our illusions more attractive.

参考译文：制造如潮水般冲击我们的经验的幻觉，这已经成了美国的职业。甚至美国的一些最诚实、最必要和最值得尊重的职业也是如此。我想的不光是广告、公关和政治演说术，而且是所有那些声称给我们提供信息、安慰我们、改良教育和提高我们的活动：我们的最佳新闻记者的工作，我们最有事业心的出版商，我们那些精力最充沛的制造商和商人，我们最成功的表演家，我们世界旅游的最佳导游，以及我们在对外关系中最有影响力的领导人。我们满足自己最奢侈期望的每一种努力只不过使得这些期望更为奢侈，使得我们的幻觉更诱人。

2.Nowadays everybody tells us that what we need is more belief, a stronger and deeper and more encompassing faith A faith. in America and in what we are doing. That may be true in the long run. What we need first and now is t0 disillusion ourselves. What ails us most is not what we have done with America, but what we have substituted for America. We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illustrations. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those imag es we have put in place of reality.

　　To discover our illusions will not solve the problems of our world. But if we do not discover them, we will never discover our real problems. To dispel the ghosts which populate the world of our making will not give us the power to conquer the real enemies of the real world or to remake the real world. But it may help us discover that we cannot make　the world in our image. It will liberate US and sharpen our vision. It will clear away the fog so we can face the world we share with all mankind.

参考译文：如今每个人都告诉我们，我们最需要的就是更多的信仰，一种更强烈，更深刻，更包容一切的信仰。一种对美国的信仰和对我们所做的事情的信仰。从长远来看，这也许是对的。我们首先需要，现在就需要的就是打破幻想。使我们最苦恼的不是我们把美国如何了，而是我们用什么代替了美国。我们受其害最深的不是我们的恶习和弱点，而是我们的幻觉。我们不是被现实所困扰，而是被我们用来代替现实的那些图象所困扰。

　　发现我们的幻觉，这并不能解决我们这个世界里的问题。但是如果我们不去发现它们，我们就永远也发现不了我们真正的问题。把居住在我们造出来的世界里的鬼魂驱散，这并不能给我们力量去征服真实世界里的真实敌人或重造真实世界。但是这样做可能帮助我们发现，我们并不能以我们的形象来塑造世界。这样做会解放我们并擦亮我们的眼睛。它会驱散迷雾，我们因此得以面对我们与全人类共有的世界。

3.This is a book about a handful of men with a curious claim to fame. By all the rules of schoolboy history books, they were nonentities: they commanded no armies, sent no men to their deaths, ruled no empires, took 1ittle part in history making decisions. A few of them achieved renown, but none was ever a national hero, a few were roundly abused, but none was ever quite a national villain. Yet what they did was more decisive for history than many acts of statesmen who basked in brighter glory, often more profoundly disturbing than the shuttling of armies back and forth across frontiers, more powerful for good and bad than the edicts of kings and legislatures. It was this: they shaped and swayed men’s minds.

参考译文：这是一本讲述一小部分对于名声有奇特权利的人的书。依照小学生历史教科书里所有的规则，他们是无足轻重的人物：他们没有指挥军队，投有派人去送死，没有统治帝国，在制造历史的决策中没有起什么作用。他们中少数人获得了名声，但没有人当过民族英雄;有几个人被狠很攻击，但没有人是十足的民族败类。但是他们所做的事情对于历史来说要比那些享有更大光荣的的治家们的许多行动更有决定性，往往比派遣军队来回穿越国境更令人不安，比君主和立法机构的饬令有更大的益处或害处。这就是：他们塑造和影响了人们的头脑。　　4.Who were these men? We know them as the Great Economists. But what is strange is how little we know about them. One would think that in a world torn by economic problems, a world that constantly worties that economic affairs and talks of economic issues, the great economists would be as familiar as the great philosophers or statesmen. Instead they are only shadowy figures of the past, and the matters they so passionately debated are regarded with a kind of distant awe. Economics, it is said, is undeniably important, but it is cold and difficult ,and best left to those who are at home in abstruse realms of thought.

参考译文：这些人是谁呢?我们知道，他们是伟大的经济学家。但奇怪的就是，我们对他们所知甚少。人们往往会想，在一个饱受经济问题蹂躏的世界里，在一个不断担忧经济事务，不断谈论经济问题的世界里，那些伟大的经济学家应该像伟大的哲学家或政治家一样为人熟知。相反，他们只是些以往模糊不清的人物，而他们如此热烈辩论的问题只是被敬而远之地看待。据说。经济学无可否认是重要的，但它冷漠而难懂，最好留给那些擅长于深奥思维领域的人去干。

5.It was neither  personalities, their careers, their biases ,nor even their ideas which bound them together .Their common denominatot was something else: a common curiosity. They were all fascinated by the world about them, by its complexity and its seeming disorder, by the cruelty which it so often masked in sanctimony and the successes of which it was so often unaware. They were all of them absorbed in the behavior of their fellow man, first as he created material wealth, and then as he trod on the toes of his neighbor to gain a share of it.

参考译文：既不是他们的个性，他们的职业，他们的偏见，也不是他们的思想把他们连接在一起。他们的共同点是别的某种东西：即共同的好奇心。他们都对周围的世界极感兴趣，对它的复杂性和表面的无序感兴趣，对它如此经常用伪装的虔诚来掩饰的残酷感兴趣，对世界往往自己未察觉的成功感兴趣。他们都专注于自己同类的行为，首先是专注于人是如何创造了物质财富，然后是专注于人如何同类相残以便获取一份财富。　6.Economies is the science of choice. It began with Aristotle but got mixed up with ethics in the Middle Ages .Adam Smith separated it from ethics, and Walras mathematized it. AIfred Marshall tried to narrow it, and Keynes made it fashionable. Robbins widened it, and SamuelNon dynamized it, but modern science made it statistical and tried to confine it again.

　　But the science wont stay put.It keeps cropping up all over the place.There is an economies of money and trade, of Droduction and consumption of distribution and development. There is also an economics of welfare ,manners, language, industry. music, and art.There is an economies of war and an eeononlies of power.There is even an economies of  love.

　　Economics seems to apply to every nook and cranny of human experienee. It is an aspect of all conscious action. Whenever decisions are made, the law of economy is called into play. Whenever alternatives exist, life takes on an eoonornic aspect. It has always been soBut how canit be?

　　It can be because economics is more than jUSt the most developed of the sciences of control. It is a way of looking at things, an ordering principle, a complete part of everything. It is a system of thought, a life game ,an element of pure knowledge.

　　It is also useful in many ways, as the rest of this book tries to show.

参考译文：经济学是选择的科学。它起始于亚里士多德，但在中世纪却与伦理学混淆起来了。亚当·斯密将它与伦理学分开，华尔拉丝把它数学化了。阿尔弗雷德·马歇尔试图缩小它的范围，凯恩斯使它流行。罗宾斯扩大了它的范围，撒缪尔逊使它有了活力，但现代科学使它数据化，并试图再度限制它。

　　但是这门科学不会停滞不前。它总是不停地在所有地方出现。有货币与贸易的经济学，有生产与消费的经济学，有分配与发展的经济学。也有福利、礼仪、语言、工业、音乐和艺术的经济学。还有战争经济学和权力经济学。甚至还有爱情经济学。

　　经济学似乎适用于人类经验的每一隐匿处和偏僻角落。它是所有有意识的行为的一个方面。无论何时作出决策，经济规律都在发挥作用。当各种选择存在时，生活就具有一个经济的方面。经济学从来如此。但它怎么会这样呢?

　　它之所以如此，是因为经济学不仅仅是最为发达的控制科学。它也是看待事物的一种方法，一种整理秩序的原理，是一切事物的一个完整部分。它是一种思想体系，是生活的一场游戏，是纯粹知识的一个成分。

　　经济学在许多方面也是有用的，本书的其余部分即要证明这一点。