The hope for the twentieth century rests on recognition that war and depression are man-made, and needless. They can be avoided in the future by turning from the nineteenth-century characteristics just mentioned (materialism, selfishness, false values, hypocrisy, and secret vices) and going back to other characteristics that our Western Society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding a increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self discipline.

The backwardness of our religious and social developments is undoubtedly holding back the development of the intellectual and political levels.

The history of the last century shows, as we shall see later, that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.

The social sciences are usually concerned with groups of persons rather than individual persons. The behavior of individuals, being free, is unpredictable.

To this day the Arab influence is evident in southern Italy, northern Africa and, above all, in Spain.

The instrument of expansion of Classical civilization was a social organization, slavery.

When goods are exchanged between countries, they must be paid for by commodities or gold. They cannot be paid for by the notes, certificates, and checks of the purchaser's country, since these are of value only in the country of issue.