“Je ne connais que trois manières d’exister dans la société: il faut être mendiant, voleur ou salarié.”

MIRABEAU

“Because it is my social function to supply the world as well as I can with a certain thing, therefore I dread the world’s being so well supplied with it that I shall be able to get little or nothing for supplying more. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this consideration, or the penetrating and intimate nature of its bearing on every aspect of the social question.”

PHILIP H. WICKSTEED

The Common Sense of Political Economy (1910)

“The sole fact that credit is today the normal and proper expression of value and of exchange has introduced an element of extreme instability into all contemporary economic systems. Modern economic systems appear to be balanced on a knife’s edge as it were; the tiniest excess or deficiency of national credit can tip the balance in one direction or the other. This system is minutely adjusted, so to speak, to reflect the smallest increment in weight which it can just support, and that is why it is so extremely sensitive.”

“The world is like a shop stocked full of goods. They are on sale for work—toil may buy them.”1

FRIEDRICH VON LOGAU (1604-1655)

“The member of Parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance.