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

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.

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

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

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

The real economic cleavage is not... between employers and employed, but between all who do constructive work, from scientist to laborer, on the one hand, and all whose main interest is the preservation of existing proprietary rights upon the other, irrespective of whether they contribute to constructive work or not.

...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.