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.

A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions.

Originality is something that is easily exaggerated, especially by authors contemplating their own work.

The drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover either for grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much-cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Few economic problems, if any, are difficult of solution. The difficulty, all but invariably, is in confronting them. We know what needs to be done; for reasons of inertia, pecuniary interest, passion or ignorance, we do not wish to say so.

No nice philosophical point has ever been so decisively resolved as this: that those who are not conceived do not miss the pleasure of consuming the goods they do not get born to enjoy.