All desire springs from a lack, which it strives continually to fill.

In a market economy, this means striving for higher family income, a highly educated and/or trainable workforce, better health care, affordable food and housing and peaceful communities.

It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.

The search for gain — which drives shareholder returns, speculative trading and interest-bearing loans — lodges dependency upon continual GDP growth deep within the financial system.

The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.

There is no craving or demand of the human mind more constant and insatiable than that for exercise and employment, and this desire seems the foundation of most of our passions and pursuits.

In trade, it is an almost infallible natural law that a hungry low-end market, an eager dumping ground for the shoddiest work, is an irresistible market force.

Desire wills its perpetuation ad infinitum.

Further, as a huge perpetual consumer of capital, I respected the fact that there is no more consistent source of capital than the public markets.

Markets are, in general, an invaluable tool for promoting human well-being. It’s very easy to forget that whenever two people enter into an economic exchange, it’s because they both expect to be better off as a result of this exchange than they would have been without it. But it is false to claim, on this basis, that the more our society relies upon competitive markets to organize the production and distribution of goods and services, the better off we will be. Sometimes moving closer to the ideal of perfect competition will make us better off, but sometimes it won’t.

Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absence, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.

Their addiction to suffering is nothing but an agreement that is reinforced every day.

As long as we believe that there is something that will permanently satisfy our hunger for security, suffering is inevitable.

The national polities of the modern world maintain their existence by deliberately fostered craving and fear.