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.

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

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.

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

...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.

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