“95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.”

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), pp. 19-20

Part III : Recantation, Ch. XI Compensation
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: The primary error of the advocates of land nationalization is in their confusion of equal rights with joint rights, and in their consequent failure to realize the nature and meaning of economic rent… In truth the right to the use of land is not a joint or common right, but an equal right; the joint or common right is to rent, in the economic sense of the term. Therefore it is not necessary for the state to take land, it is only necessary for it to take rent. This taking by the commonalty of what is of common right, would of itself secure equality in what is of equal right — for since the holding of land could be profitable only to the user, there would be no inducement for any one to hold land that he could not adequately use, and monopolization being ended no one who wanted to use land would have any difficulty in finding it.

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

Introduction
Free Culture (2004)
Context: I believe it would be right for common sense to revolt against the extreme claims made today on behalf of "intellectual property." What the law demands today is increasingly as silly as a sheriff arresting an airplane for trespass. But the consequences of this silliness will be much more profound.

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 7

The Fabric of Reality (1997)

Writing for the court, Peak v. United States, 353 U.S. 43 (1957)
Judicial opinions