“It is an invisible hand because the agents in question do not intend to create a shared system of morality – they intend only to achieve mutual sympathy here, now, with this person. In so doing, however, they (unintentionally) establish the precedents and behavioral habits that will generate, constitute, and maintain a shared system of expectations and sentiments.”

“Mere justice is, upon most occasions, but a negative virtue, and only hinders us from hurting our neighbor.”

“Even the optimists cannot overlook the fact that dissatisfaction and discontent seem only to grow with the profusion of goods designed for creature comforts and in inverse proportion to the happiness expected of those goods. But they are unable to understand the profound causes of this apparent paradox.”

“I suggest that many of our students, including some of our most thoughtful ones, are reluctant to let themselves be captured by the economic way of thinking because they see economic theory as at bottom an elaborate justification for an immoral society.”

“The fundamental error lies in supposing that the reason the Golden Rule won't work is that human beings are basically selfish. I submit that the Golden Rule won't work as an organizing principle for a commercial society because human beings are not omniscient.”