“Since its appearance the view that prostitution is a product of capitalism has gained ground enormously. And as, in addition, preachers still complain that the good old morals have decayed, and accuse modern culture of having led to loose living, everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.”

“Nonetheless, many people, and especially intellectuals, passionately loathe capitalism. As they see it, this ghastly mode of society’s economic organization has brought about nothing but mischief and misery. Men were once happy and prosperous in the good old days preceding the Industrial Revolution. Now under capitalism the immense majority are starving paupers ruthlessly exploited by rugged individualists. For these scoundrels nothing counts but their moneyed interests. They do not produce good and really useful things, but only what will yield the highest profits. They poison bodies with alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and souls and minds with tabloids, lascivious books and silly moving pictures. The “ideological superstructure” of capitalism is a literature of decay and degradation, the burlesque show and the art of striptease, the Hollywood pictures and the detective stories.”

“All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out”

“As a rule, capitalism is blamed for the undesired effects of a policy directedat its elimination. The man who sips his morning coffee does not say, "Capitalism has brought this beverage to my breakfast table." But when he reads in the papers that the government of Brazil has ordered part of the coffee crop destroyed, he does not say, "That is government for you"; he exclaims, "That is capitalism for you.”

“In the market economy the consumers are supreme. Consumers determine, by theirbuying or abstention from buying, what should be produced, by whom and how, ofwhat quality and in what quantity. The entrepreneurs, capitalists, and landowners whofail to satisfy in the best possible and cheapest way the most urgent of the not yetsatisfied wishes of the consumers are forced to go out of business and forfeit theirpreferred position. In business offices and in laboratories the keenest minds are busyfructifying the most complex achievements of scientific research for the production ofever better implements and gadgets for people who have no inkling of the scientifictheories that make the fabrication of such things possible. The bigger an enterprise is,the more it is forced to adjust its production activities to the changing whims andfancies of the masses, its masters. The fundamental principle of capitalism is massproduction to supply the masses. It is the patronage of the masses that makesenterprises grow into bigness. The common man is supreme in the market economy.He is the customer “who is always right.”

“The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.”

“Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulatesriches.”