" While religious enthusiasm might lead them to damn each other as infidels, the quest for wealth creates a new consensus, for all agree that the bankrupt, and he alone, is “unfaithful.” Here Voltaire is the prophet of the profit motive: compared to the competitive quest for salvation, the quest for wealth is more likely to make men “peaceful” and “content.” Compared to the altruistic crusade of forcibly saving one’s neighbor’s soul, even if it leaves his body in ruins, the pursuit of wealth is a potentially more peaceable pursuit, and one that leaves one’s neighbor content. "

― Jerry Z. Muller , The Mind and the Market: Capitalism in Western Thought