When the final result is expected to be a compromise, it is often prudent to start from an extreme position.

Nothing can preserve the integrity of contact between individuals, except a discretionary authority in the state to revise what has become intolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are too great. If the accretions of vested interests were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half.

If farming were to be organised like the stock market, a farmer would sell his farm in the morning when it was raining, only to buy it back in the afternoon when the sun came out.

It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary. Moreover, the necessary measures of socialization can be introduced gradually and without a break in the general traditions of society.

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.

If human nature felt no temptation to take a chance there might not be much investment merely as a result of cold calculation.

Investing is an activity of forecasting the yield over the life of the asset; speculation is the activity of forecasting the psychology of the market.