[B]usiness, the target of fanatical hatred on the part of all contemporary governments and self-styled intellectuals, acquires and preserves bigness only because it works for the masses. The plants that cater to the luxuries of the few never attain big size.
In order to be rich, it is not sufficient to have once saved and accumulated capital. It is necessary to invest it again and again in those lines in which it best fills the wants of the consumers. The market process is a daily repeated plebiscite, and it ejects inevitably from the ranks of profitable people those who do not employ their property according to the orders given by the public.
It is customary to see the radical innovations that capitalism brought about in the substitution of the mechanical factory for the more primitive and less efficient methods of the artisans’ shops. This is a rather superficial view. The characteristic feature of capitalism that distinguishes it from pre-capitalist methods of production was its new principle of marketing. Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses.
Mass phenomena to which the theory of probability does not apply are, of course, of common occurrence.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, “You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.”
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea shops.
One may ride upon a tiger’s back but it is fatal to dismount.
Wages will always be in proportion to the productive capacity of the worker, and not in proportion to his needs.
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.