It is true that some secluded intellectuals in their esoteric circles talk differently. They proclaim the priority of what they call eternal absolute values and feign in their declamations—not in their personal conduct—a disdain of things secular and transitory. But the public ignores such utterances. The main goal of present-day political action is to secure for the respective pressure group memberships the highest material well-being. The only way for a leader to succeed is to instill in people the conviction that his program best serves the attainment of this goal.

Men are fighting one another because they are convinced that the extermination and liquidation of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

If one regards inflation as an evil, then one has to stop inflating. One has to balance the budget of the government.

The only source of the generation of additional capital goods is saving. If all the goods produced are consumed, no new capital comes into being.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

In the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.

The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.