Capitalism is the only society in human history in which neither tradition nor conscious direction supervises the total effort of the community; it is the only society in which the future, the needs for tomorrow, are entirely left to an automatic system.

Growth is the mantra of our society because the economy can't remain healthy without growth.Impregnable monopolies aside (and these are few), profits are both the hallmark of capitalism and its Achilles heel, for no business can permanently maintain its prices much above its costs. There is only one way in which profits can be perpetuated; a business-or an entire economy-must grow.

As the histories of ancient and modern democracies illustrate, the pressure of political movement in times of war, civil commotion, or general anxiety pushes in the direction of authority, not away from it.

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.

One accumulates or one gets accumulated.

The cure for capitalism's failing would require that a government would have to rise above the interests of one class alone.

Mathematics has given economics rigor, but alas, also mortis.