We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive redistribution.

The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom.

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

History seldom destroys that which does not deserve to die; and the burning of the tares makes for the next sowing a richer soil.

If I were rich I would have many books, and I would pamper myself with bindings bright to the eye and soft to the touch, paper generously opaque, and type such as men designed when printing was very young. I would dress my gods in leather and gold, and burn candles of worship before them at night, and string their names like beads on a string.