The income men derive from producing things of slight consequence is of great consequence. The production reflects the low marginal utility of the goods to society. The income reflects the high total utility of a livelihood to a person.

Financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long-run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with Communism, lies the threat to Capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound.

It was Herbert Spencer, not Charles Darwin, who coined the phrase Survival of the Fittest.

When everything else failed, we can still become immortal by making an enormous blunder.

There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

Faced with having to change our views or prove that there is no need to do so, most of us immediately get busy on the proof.

Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.