"The race to the moon was never really about the moon - its utility didn't rest in samples of moon rock. It was about capitalism versus communism, right versus left."

"Money, having freed itself from the physical universe, has become number itself, and finance a strange form of mathematical alchemy."

"For even money itself has no value if there is no network of people to recognize it."

"Advanced technology is great at tasks such as keeping an airliner flying several thousand feet in the air, but is easily crippled by social complications."

"If the aim of economics is really to provide the greatest happiness to the most people, than it is rather shocking to discover that economic growth has no net effect on happiness. So what has gone wrong with the neoclassical prospect?"

"A society in which each person is hell bent on maximizing his or her own utility, may therefore have declining overall utility."

"There is something intrinsically upside down and counter-intuitive in the relationship between money and happiness."