I find myself more and more relying for a solution of our problems on the invisible hand which I tried to eject from economic thinking twenty years ago.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.

Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better chance than an increase of balancing the budget.

The spectacle of modern investment markets has sometimes moved me towards the conclusion that to make the purchase of an investment permanent and indissoluble, like marriage, except by reason of death or other grave cause, might be a useful remedy for our contemporary evils. For this would force the investor to direct his mind to the long-term prospects and to those only.

In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.