“When I ventured to criticise, the other day, this system I was, I am afraid, misunderstood. As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of returning into private ownership and private management all those means of production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism. I am sure they will be more efficient. What I ventured to question was the using of these huge sums as if they were income.
I know now, I have learnt now from the letters that I have received, that I am quite out of date. Modern economists have decided there is no difference between capital and income. I am not so sure. In my younger days, I and perhaps others of your Lordships had friends, good friends, very good fellows indeed too, who failed to make this distinction. For a few years everything went on very well, and then at last the crash came, and they were forced to retire out to some dingy lodging-house in Boulogne, or if the estate were larger and the trustees more generous, to a decent accommodation at Baden-Baden.”
Hansard, House of Lords, 5th series, vol. 468, cols. 390-1.
Speech in the House of Lords, 14 November 1985.
1980s
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Harold Macmillan 26
British politician 1894–1986Related quotes
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 172
1940s
“Now I know who I am: myself and none other. I am Taran.”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book IV: Taran Wanderer (1967), Chapter 21
Context: “I saw myself,” Taran answered. “In the time I watched, I saw strength – and frailty. Pride and vanity, courage and fear. Of wisdom, a little. Of folly, much. Of intentions, many good ones; but many more left undone. In this, alas, I saw myself a man like any other.
“But this, too, I saw,” he went on. “Alike as men may seem, each is different as flakes of snow, no two the same. You told me you had no need to seek the Mirror, knowing you were Annlaw Clay-Shaper. Now I know who I am: myself and none other. I am Taran.”
Source: The Bridges of Madison County
“I am not so much concerned with the return on capital as I am with the return of capital.”
The Prudent Professor: Planning and Saving for a Worry-Free Retirement (2011) by Edwin M. Bridges, Brian D. Bridges;
Forbes Guide to the Markets: Becoming a Savvy Investor (2009) by Forbes, LLC, Marc M. Groz
The National Underwriter, Volume 45 (1941), p. 12: "As Eddie Cantor put it years ago, after getting burned in the stock market, the life insurance policyholder is more interested in the return of his money than in the return on it."
Misattributed