The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property.

Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.

What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you.

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

The main achievement of economics is that it has provided a theory of peaceful human cooperation. This is why the harbingers of violent conflict have branded it as a dismal science and why this age of wars, civil wars, and destruction has no use for it.

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests.

Economics is not about things and tangible material objects; it is about men, their meanings and actions.