We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.

Washington is a place where men praise courage and act on elaborate personal cost-benefit calculations.

It is almost as important to know what is not serious as to know what is.

Things that come from the private sector are in abundant supply; things that depend on the public sector are widely a problem. We're a world, as I said in The Affluent Society, of filthy streets and clean houses, poor schools and expensive television.

If people are hungry, ill-clad, unsheltered or diseased, nothing is so important as to remedy their condition.

The shortcomings of economics are not original error but uncorrected obsolescence. The obsolescence has occurred because what is convenient has become sacrosanct. Anyone who attacks such ideas must seem to be a trifle self-confident and even aggressive. The man who makes his entry by leaning against an infirm door gets an unjustified reputation for violence. Something is to be attributed to the poor state of the door.

From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute.