The notion that you would initiate a new product without preparing the way by persuasion and advertising and salesmanship is fantastic. It's an integral part of the system.

Increasingly in recent times we have come first to identify the remedy that is most agreeable, most convenient, most in accord with major pecuniary or political interest, the one that reflects our available faculty for action; then we move from the remedy so available or desired back to a cause to which that remedy is relevant.

For the sake of The Progressive, I will say that [Robert] La Follette was relevant, but he was the last.

In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.

Talk of revolution is one of avoiding reality.

You will find that [the] State [Department] is the kind of organisation which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly too.

The accepted ideas of any period are singularly those that serve the dominant economic interest...What economists believe and teach, whether in the United States or in the Soviet Union, is rarely hostile to the institutions - the private business enterprise, the Communist Party - that reflect the dominant economic power. Not to notice this takes effort, although many succeed.