The characteristic virtue of Englishmen is power of sustained practical activity and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles.

Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans.

An erring colleague is not an Amalkite to be smitten hip and thigh.

Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are in common.

It is probable that democracy owes more to nonconformity than to any other single movement.

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.

Too often, contemning the external order as unspiritual, [the Puritan] has made it, and ultimately himself, less spiritual by reason of his contempt.

By a kind of happy pre-established harmony, such as a later age discovered between the needs of society and the self-interest of the individual, success in business is in itself almost a sign of spiritual grace, for it is a proof that a man has laboured faithfully in his vocation.

If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.

The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.

...and was disposed too often to idealize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth and social position which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and odious vice of the Englishman.

A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part of outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria which are not purely economic.

Convinced that character is all and circumstances nothing, [the Puritan] sees in the poverty of those who fall by the way, not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion ... but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.

When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.

Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.