Popular quotes about Capitalism! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 31
People think what's in the US today is capitalism. It's not even close to capitalism. Capitalism doesn't have a central bank, capitalism doesn't have taxes, it doesn't have regulations; capitalism is just voluntary transactions. What they have in the US today I call crapitalism. But it's sad that so many people are confused and they think, 'Oh that's free markets in the US', when it's one of the least free market countries on earth.
Jeff BerwickThere's a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. Venture capitalism we like. Vulture capitalism, no. And the fact of the matter is that he's going to have to face up to this at some time or another, and South Carolina is as good a place to draw that line in the sand as any.
Rick PerryWe got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.
Fred HamptonThe truth is that capitalism has not only multiplied population figures, but at the same time, improved the people's standard of living in an unprecedented way. Neither economic thinking nor historical experience suggests that any other social system could be as beneficial to the masses as capitalism. The results speak for themselves. The market economy needs no apologists and propagandists. It can apply to itself the words of Sir Christopher Wren's epitaph in St. Paul's: Si monumentum requires, circumspice.
Ludwig von MisesCapitalism has been fully restored in Yugoslavia, as is well-known, but this capitalism knows how to disguise. Yugoslavia portrays itself as a socialist state, but of a special kind, as the world has never seen it before! The Titoites even boast that their state has nothing in common with the first socialist state which emerged from the socialist October Revolution and which was founded by Lenin and Stalin on the basis of the scientific theory of Marx and Engels.
Enver Hoxhachurches, like all the rest of our major institutions, are rooted in capitalism. For a church to attack capitalism is to 'bite the hand that feeds it.
Georgia HarknessCapitalism is chronically unstable.Boom and bust has always marked capitalism in the United States. There were panics in 1785, 1791, 1819, 1857, 1869, 1873, 1907, 1929 and 1987.In economies and politics, as in war, an astonishing number of people die, like the man on the railway crossing, defending their right of way. This is a poorly developed instinct in Switzerland. No country so firmly avows the principles of private enterprise but in few have the practical concessions to socialism been more numerous and varied.
John Kenneth GalbraithWe often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States - that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population.
Arundhati RoyCapitalism had arisen through the misuse and exaggeration of certain rights, notably the right of property - the basis of economic freedom - and the right of contract, which is one of the main functions of economic freedom. Therefore, even under Capitalism, so long as the old principles were remembered it was possible to recall the principles whereby Society had once been sane and well ordered.
Hilaire BellocOur capitalistic scheme in the latter years of the 20th century seems to have lost its way. We've had a "pathalogical change" from traditional owners capitalism where most of the rewards have gone to those who make the investments and assume the risks to a new and deeply flawed system of managers capitalism where the managers of our corporations our investment system, and our mutual funds are simply take too large a share of the returns generated by our corporations and mutual funds leaving the last line investors - pension beneficiaries and mutual fund owners at the bottom of the food chain.
John C. BogleThe Family in particular, but also other really **** conservatives come to call what is "Biblical Capitalism." The idea that capitalism is ordained in the Bible and that inasmuch as we interfere with the market, we're interfering with God's literal and visible hand.
Jeff SharletCapitalism and socialism are two distinct patterns of social organization. Private control of the means of production and public control are contradictory notions and not merely contrary notions. There is no such thing as a mixed economy, a system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
Ludwig von MisesThe only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is not being exploited by capitalism.
Joan RobinsonIn a system of capitalism, as people's wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
Bill GatesNatural capitalism is not about making sudden changes, uprooting institutions, or fomenting upheaval for a new social order. Natural capitalism is about making small, critical choices that can tip economic and social factors in positive ways.
Paul HawkenThe sin of capitalism, perhaps, is to make wants feel like needs, to give to simple silly stuff the urgency of near-physical necessity: I must have it. The grace of capitalism is to make wants feel like hopes, so that material objects and stuff can feel like the possibility of something heroic and civic.
Adam GopnikI see myself, in terms of the question of capitalism, as I would support democratic socialism over a capitalist system, because any approach... or participatory economics, which is another great model that people like Michael Albert are putting out there... any system that encourages us to think about interdependency, and to be able to use the world's resources in a wiser way, for the good of the whole, would be better for the world than capitalism.
Bell HooksWhat I'm saying to you this morning is that Communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the Kingdom of Brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of Communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis.
Martin Luther King, Jr.The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.
William PfaffCommunism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social, and the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both.
Martin Luther King, Jr.It is, let me say, at the very least by no means self-evident that there is more liberty, equality, and fraternity in the world today than there was one thousand years ago. One might arguably suggest that the opposite is true. I seek to paint no idyll of the worlds before historical capitalism. They were worlds of little liberty, little equality, and little fraternity. The only question is whether historical capitalism represented progress in these regards, or regression.
Immanuel WallersteinThe dream of capitalism is to co-opt people with higher living standards without redistributing any wealth. Without co-optation, widespread repression is the only guarantor of gross inequality.
Holly SklarWe who are members of the Communist Party repudiate the exclusive identification of democracy with capitalism. We declare that democracy can be widened, take on new aspects, become truly a rule of the people, only when it is extended to the economic life of the people, as in the Soviet Union. As far as women are concerned, the U.S.S.R. is a trailblazer for equal rights and equal opportunities.
Elizabeth Gurley FlynnIf you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn't call it a 'failure of swimming.' So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a 'failure of capitalism'?
Peter BoettkeIs it logical to ask how far away are we from the pope explaining that abortion can be justified, "in certain circumstances, in certain regions," and if it might be related to the evils of American capitalism and our immigration policy?
Rush LimbaughCreative capitalism takes this interest in the fortunes of others and ties it to our interest in our own fortunes in ways that help advance both. This hybrid engine of self-interest and concern for others can serve a much wider circle of people than can be reached by self-interest or caring alone.
Bill GatesModern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience-- yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim-- except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.
Erich FrommTechnological change can become 'fetishized' as a 'thing in itself', as an exogenous guiding force in the history of capitalism.
David HarveyThis crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future.
Albert EinsteinWe are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism
Tony BennA triumphalist corporate capitalism, free at last of the specter of Communism, has mobilized its economic power to relentlessly marginalize all nonmarket values; to subordinate every aspect of American life to corporate "efficiency" and the bottom line; to demonize not only government but the very idea of public service and public goods.
Ellen WillisNo one is safe from Matteraโs hard-hitting, meticulously reported, and genuinely funny investigative journalism. CRAPITALISM blows the lid off crony capitalism.
Monica CrowleyUnbridled capitalism in the United States can't be sustained socially. It leads to tensions.
Kenneth RogoffMarx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx.
Joan RobinsonThere is a tendency under capitalism system to reduce everything to a kind of commodity fetish, and this order tends to promote extremely conventional and uniform expressions of gender and sexuality in order to promote certain products and lifestyle choices that are commercialized. This necessarily entails a capitulation to heteronormativity, or in the case of the new gay movement, a "homonormativity" that doesn't stray far from the heterosexual paradigm. Anyone who questions these normative values and conventions is subject to disapproval, hostility, or even violence.
Bruce LaBruceUnrestricted laissez faire capitalism allocates resources in a most efficient way to satisfy human wants without regard to the rationality or morality of those desires.
Jerry PournelleFashion is the most intense expression of the phenomenon of neomania, which has grown ever since the birth of capitalism. Neomania assumes that purchasing the new is the same as acquiring value... If the purchase of a new garment coincides with the wearing out of an old one, then obviously there is no fashion. If a garment is worn beyond the moment of its natural replacement, there is pauperization. Fashion flourishes on surplus, when someone buys more than he or she needs.
Stephen BayleyWe preach free enterprise capitalism. We believe in it, we give our lives in war for it, but the closest most of us come to profiting from it are a few miserable shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay large enough dividends to keep a small mouse in cheese. The truth is, most of us are job serfs. At a time when invested capital returns 20 to 30 percent, we have no capital. We only have our wages and salaries, and a debt so high that something like 20c on every dollar we earn is spent to pay off what we owe.
Nicholas von HoffmanI am an ardent supporter of capitalism - but I also understand that while individuals have inalienable, God-given rights, corporations do not.
Gary HamelCapitalism has not proven to be a transitional form, a gateway to a higher human future.
Allen W. WoodWhat is called 'capitalism' might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and those capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it.
Thomas SowellThe ever-mounting glut of waste materials is characteristic by-product of modern consumer society. It might even be argued that capitalism's continual need to find of generate markets means that disposibility and waste have become the spine of the system. To consume means, literally, to destroy or expend, and in the garbage crisis we confront the underlying truth of a society in which enormous productive capacities and market forces have harnessed human needs and desires, without regard to the long or even short-term future of life on the planet.
Stuart Ewen