At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that laborsaving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past... From Progress and Poverty, To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each.

The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.