Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are in common.

A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic.

As long as men are men, a poor society cannot be too poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too rich to have need to seek it.

The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.

A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.

When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.