… is from page 115 of the 5th edition (2015) of Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics (original emphasis):
To many people, even today, high profits are often attributed to high prices charged by those motivated by “greed.” In reality, most of the great fortunes in American history have resulted from someone’s figuring out how to reduce costs, so as to be able to charge lower prices and therefore gain a mass market for the product. Henry Ford did this with automobiles, Rockefeller with oil, Carnegie with steel, and Sears, Penney, Walton and other department store chain founders with a variety of products.
