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.

Inflation does not lubricate trade but by rescuing traders from their errors of optimism or stupidity.

It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation.

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

It had been held that the economic system, any capitalist system, found its equilibrium at full employment. Left to itself, it was thus that it came to rest. Idle men and idle plant were an aberration, a wholly temporary failing. Keynes showed that the modern economy could as well find its equilibrium with continuing, serious unemployment. Its perfectly normal tendency was to what economists have since come to call an underemployment equilibrium.