When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there
will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid our-
selves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for
two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of
human qualities into the position of highest virtues.
-- John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) "Essays in Persuasion" (1931)
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid
of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men
and women who shall renovate life and our social state but we see that
most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an
ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean
and beg day and night continually....