Very few of the heroes of the Golden Age of American finance had much interest in the solid realities of what underlay their structure of stocks and bonds and credits. Later on, a Henry Ford might introduce an era of intensely production-minded captains of industry, but the Harrimans, Morgans, Fricks, and Rockefellers were far more interested in the exciting manipulation of huge masses of intangible wealth than in the humdrum business of turning out goods.

Veblen once asked a religious student the value of her church in kegs of beer.

Economists can be called the worldly philosophers for they sought to embrace in a scheme of philosophy the most worldly of man's activities-his drive for wealth.

We turn to Marx, therefore, not because he is infallible, but because he is inescapable.

We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it.

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.

Socialism has been a great tragedy this century.