Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument.

Man is a hating rather than a loving animal.

Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.

There is no escape from mystery. It is the character of our being.

I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.

Art and propaganda have this much connection, that if a propaganda makes art impossible, it is clearly damned.

Economists are like Aeolian harps, and the sounds that issue from them are determined by the winds that blow.