Industry entirely left to itself, would soon fall to ruin, and a nation letting everything alone would commit suicide.

The relationship I have to my fatherland is like that of mothers with crippled children: they love them all the more, the more crippled they are. Germany is the background of all my plans, the return to Germany.

The concentration and reciprocal effect of industry and agriculture conjoin in a growth of productive powers, which increases more in geometrical than in arithmetical proportion.

Look around, and you see everywhere the exertions and acts of individuals restricted, regulated, or promoted, on the principle of the common welfare.

But the general welfare must restrict and regulate the exertions of the individuals, as the individuals must derive a supply of their strength from social power.

The more a person learns how to use the forces of nature for his own purposes, by means of perfecting the sciences and the invention and improvement of machines, the more he will produce.

Industry entirely left to itself, would soon fall to ruin, and a nation letting everything alone would commit suicide.