Capitalism begins with giving.

The key to growth is quite simple: creative men with money. The cause of stagnation is similarly clear: depriving creative individuals of financial power.

The United States is probably the most [socially] mobile society in the history of the world. The virtues that are most valuable in it are diligence, discipline, ambition, and a willingness to take risks. Education and credentials are most important in government; elsewhere most skills are learned on the job.

The rates of taxation climb and the levels of capital decline, until the only remaining wealth beyond the reach of the regime is the very protein of human flesh, and that too is finally taxed, bound, and gagged, and brought to the colossal temple of the state - a final sacrifice of carnal revenue to feed the declining elite.

Wealth usually comes from doing what other people find insufferably boring.

The belief that all wealth comes from stealing is popular in prisons and at Harvard.

Unlike an inexorable, Newtonian "great machine", the economy is not a closed system.