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

...and was disposed too often to idealize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth and social position which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and odious vice of the Englishman.

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.

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

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

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.

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.