Abraham, Daniel -- Leviathan Wakes, ch. 36 (2011) [with Ty Franck]

Dave — Thu, 12 May 2022 14:21:29 +0000

“There’s a right thing to do,” Holden said.

“You don’t have a right thing, friend,” Miller said. “You’ve got a whole plateful of maybe a little less wrong.”

Daniel Abraham (b. 1969) American writer [pseud. James S. A. Corey (with Ty Franck), M. L. N. Hanover]
Leviathan Wakes, ch. 36 (2011) [with Ty Franck]

Keynes, John Maynard -- (Attributed)

Dave — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 21:35:13 +0000

[Capitalism is] the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) English economist
(Attributed)

Attributed by Sir George Schuster, Christianity and Human Relations in Industry (1951). Frequently quoted, but no direct citation found.

A common variant, also not found in Keynes' work (and also attributed, without citation, to John Kenneth Galbraith):

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

E. A. G. Robinson was a close colleague of Galbraith, and in his book Monopoly (1941), he wrote:

The great merit of the capitalist system, it has been said, is that it succeeds in using the nastiest motives of nasty people for the ultimate benefit of society.

Another variant:

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.

More discussion and research into this quote:

WIST Quotations

Abraham, Daniel -- Leviathan Wakes, ch. 36 (2011) [with Ty Franck]

Keynes, John Maynard -- (Attributed)