Economic progress means the discovery and application of better ways of doing things to satisfy our wants. The piping of water to a household that previously dragged it from a well, the growing of two blades of grass where one grew before, the development of a power loom that enables one man to weave ten times as much as he could before, the use of steam power and electric power instead of horse or human power - all these things clearly represent economic progress.

... the fouling of the nest which has been typical of man's activity in the past on a local scale now seems to be extending to the whole world society.

As far as many statistical series that are related to activities of mankind are concerned, the date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory. The world of today is as different from the world I was born in as that world was from Julius Caesar s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.

Political conflict rests to a very large extent on a universal ignorance of consequences, as the people who are benefited by any particular act or policy are rarely those who struggled for it, and the people who are injured are rarely those who opposed it.

Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.

The discounting presumably is to be done for each period of time at that rate of interest which represents the alternative cost of employing capital in the occupation in question; that is, at the rate which the entrepreneur could obtain in other investments

The tourist business is a trap, it is a tained honey; Man clearly should have stayed in bed, and not invented money.