War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.

The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings...but no one has for those reasons yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as stimulators of the productive forces in the general interest.

If the present tax rates had been in effect from the beginning of our century, many who are millionaires today would live under more modest circumstances. But all those new branches of industry which supply the masses with articles unheard of before, would operate, if at all, on a much smaller scale, and their products would be beyond the reach of the common man.

Within the market society each serves all his fellow citizens and each is served by them. It is a system of mutual exchange of services and commodities, a mutual giving, and receiving.

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.

As soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individuals mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest details.