“If we read History with any degree of thoughtfulness, we shall find that checks and balances of Profit and Loss have never been the grand agents with men, that they have never been roused into deep, thorough, all-pervading efforts by any computable prospect of Profit and Loss, for any visible, finite object; but always for some invisible and infinite one.”

—  Thomas Carlyle

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

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Thomas Carlyle 481
Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

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