Sublime

Smith’s claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history – revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer

We now know that Rousseau was wrong. The curiosity of children does not work in anything like the way he believed, or his contemporary adherents propose. His ideas are seductive, but the reason they have to be constantly reinvented is that they do not work.

“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”

He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position.

The aim, therefore, of patriots, was to set limits to the power which the ruler should be suffered to exercise over the community; and this limitation was what they meant by liberty.

Some of Locke’s opinions are so odd that I cannot see how to make them sound sensible. He says that a man must not have so many plums that they are bound to go bad before he and his family can eat them; but he may have as much gold and as many diamonds as he can lawfully get, because gold and diamonds do not go bad. It does not occur to him that th

The contemporary idea that more is better, that follow counts are a good indicator of popularity, that basing the world almost solely around economies and GDP is reasonable would have appealed to him. He lay the groundwork for them. 

Another

Perhaps the most thoroughly brilliant and typical man of this decade is Mr. Bernard Shaw.