Echoes

More people are interested in trying to shuffle paper assets around than building lasting assets by producing real goods.

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

What we in industry learned in dealing with people is that people do not work just for money and that if you are trying to motivate, money is not the most effective tool.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

I believe people work for satisfaction.

Be ever active in the management of the economy, because the root of wealth is economic activity; inactivity brings material distress.

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.

The gods help them that help themselves.

The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security.

I believe that material wealth is an exceedingly valuable servant, and a particularly abhorrent master, in our National life. I think one end of government should be to achieve prosperity; but it should follow this end chiefly to serve an even higher and more important end - that of promoting the character and welfare of the average man. In the long run, and inevitably, the actual control of the government will be determined by the chief end which the government subserves. If the end and aim of government action is merely to accumulate general material prosperity, treating such prosperity as an end in itself and not as a means, then it is inevitable that material wealth and the masters of that wealth will dominate and control the course of national action. If, on the other hand, the achievement of material wealth is treated, not as an end of government, but as a thing of great value, it is true—so valuable as to be indispensable—but of value only in connection with the achievement of other ends, then we are free to seek through our government, and through the supervision of our individual activities, the realization of a true democracy. Then we are free to seek not only the heaping up of material wealth, but a wise and generous distribution of such wealth so as to diminish grinding poverty, and, so far as may be, to equalize social and economic no less than political opportunity.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have.

The gentleman understands what is moral. The small man understands what is profitable.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.

Every man is the architect of his own fortune.

The people as a whole can be benefited morally and materially by a system which shall permit of ample reward for exceptional efficiency, but which shall nevertheless secure to the average man, who does his work faithfully and well, the reward to which he is entitled. Remember that I speak only of the man who does his work faithfully and well. The man who shirks his work, who is lazy or vicious, or even merely incompetent, deserves scant consideration; we may be sorry for his family, but it is folly to waste sympathy on the man himself; and it is also folly for sentimentalists to try to shift the burden of blame from such a man himself to “society” and it is an outrage to give him the reward given to his hard-working, upright, and efficient brother. Still less should we waste sympathy on the criminal; there are altogether too many honest men who need it; and one chief point in dealing with the criminal should be to make him understand that he will be in personal peril if he becomes a lawbreaker. I realize entirely that in the last analysis, with the nation as with the individual, it is private character that counts for most. It is because of this realization that I gladly lay myself open to the charge that I preach too much, and dwell too much upon moral commonplaces; for though I believe with all my heart in the nationalization of this Nation—in the collective use on behalf of the American people of the governmental powers which can be derived only from the American people as a whole—yet I believe even more in the practical application by the individual of those great fundamental moralities.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Virtue is the root; wealth is the result.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

The man who dies rich dies disgraced.