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.

Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans.

One of the main truths of all education is that if the young are not always right, the old are always wrong.

If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.

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

It is not till it is discovered that high individual incomes will not purchase the mass of mankind immunity from cholera, typhus, and ignorance, still less secure them the positive advantages of educational opportunity and economic security, that slowly and reluctantly, amid prophecies of moral degeneration and economic disaster, society begins to make collective provision for needs which no ordinary individual, even if he works overtime all his life, can provide himself.

It is probable that democracy owes more to nonconformity than to any other single movement.