Capitalism Quotes - Page 38

• A properly functioning free market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as crabgrass springs from suburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores... Capitalism is a government program.

  George Will

  Spring, Government, Law

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• Though editorialists at The New York Times and The Washington Post still don't get it, most Democrats in Congress finally do: Today's trade disputes are no longer mostly about tariffs, quotas, or free entry of goods. They are about the ground rules for capitalism. Are there to be only property rights? What about the other rights that liberal democracies have fought for since the 1880s?

  Robert Kuttner

  New York, Democracies Have, Rights

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• Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

  Molly Ivins

  Simple, People, Political

  "I Told You So". archive.is. May 30, 2002.

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• The broad liberal objective is a balanced and flexible "mixed economy," thus seeking to occupy that middle ground between capitalism and socialism whose viability has so long been denied by both capitalists and socialists.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Long, Libertarian, Socialism

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• Moloch merely shovels babies into the fire of productive capitalism. Mammon hooks them on the dead heroin of envy.

  Hakim Bey

  Baby, Fire, Envy

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• Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion. The industrial society ... recognises nothing except the power to acquire ... No other kind of hope or satisfaction or pleasure can any longer be envisaged within the culture of capitalism.

  John Berger

  Envy, Culture, Satisfaction

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• Most of our country's serious problems can be laid at the feet of Congress and the White House and not at capitalism.

  Walter E. Williams

  Country, White, Feet

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• By Revolution, we mean the ultimate establishment of an order of society which may not be threatened by such breakdown, and in which the sovereignty of the proletariat should be recognized and a world federation should redeem humanity from the bondage of capitalism and misery of imperial wars.

  Bhagat Singh

  War, Mean, Order

  Bhagat Singh, Bhupendra Hooja, Democratic Youth Federation of India (2007). “Bhagat Singh, on the path of liberation”

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• I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez-faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Opportunity, Giving, Laissez Faire Capitalism

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• As a businessman, Frank Lorenzo gives capitalism a bad name.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Names, Giving, Aviation

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• A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism - the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. Mercy toward the animals in our care is one such casualty.

  Michael Pollan

  Animal, Cooking, Example

  Michael Pollan (2009). “The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World”, p.161, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

  Smedley Butler

  Wall, Marine, Men

  "War Is a Racket". Smedley Butler's speech in the U.S. (1933); later published as a book "War Is a Racket", www.businessinsider.com. 1935.

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• I hope corporations will dedicate a percentage of their top innovators' time to issues that could help people left out of the global economy. This kind of contribution is even more powerful than giving cash or offering employees' time off to volunteer. It is a focused use of what your company does best. It is a great form of creative capitalism, because it takes the brainpower and makes life better for the richest, and dedicates some of it to improving the lives of everyone else.

  Bill Gates

  Business, Powerful, Issues

  Speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, news.microsoft.com. January 24, 2008.

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• The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor. I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities.

  Bill Gates

  Business, Government, Ideas

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• We need to graduate from the ridiculous notion that greed is some kind of elixir for capitalism - it's the downfall of capitalism. Self-interest, maybe, but self-interest run amok does not serve anyone. The core value of conscious capitalism is enlightened self-interest. As Jim Cramer on CNBC says, "Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered."

  Patricia Aburdene

  Running, Business, Pigs

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• We've now become conscious of the uncalculated social, economic, and environmental costs of that kind of "unconscious" capitalism. And many are beginning to practice a form of "conscious capitalism," which involves integrity and higher standards, and in which companies are responsible not just to shareholders, but also to employees, consumers, suppliers, and communities. Some call it "stakeholder capitalism."

  Patricia Aburdene

  Business, Integrity, Practice

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• Natural 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 Hawken

  Business, Order, Choices

  "Natural Capitalism" by Paul Hawken, www.motherjones.com. March\April 1997.

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• Capitalism, by its nature, entails a constant process of motion, growth and progress.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Growth, Progress, Process

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• Capitalism involves struggle, but it has an invisible heart beating at its core that transforms people's lives.

  Russ Roberts

  Struggle, Heart, People

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• Rarely has a collection of essays from a dozen scholars created a whole greater than the sum of its parts, but Capitalism Takes Command conveys with detail, coherence, and sophistication the changes in the American economy in the nineteenth century under the multiple imperatives of capitalism.

  Joyce Appleby

  Details, Dozen, Coherence

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• When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

  William O'Brien

  Love, Socialism, Marxism

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• The things you own end up owning you.

  Brad Pitt

  Fighting, Simple Life, Clubs

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• While it might surprise many ecologists to hear, capitalism is itself the ultimate form of conservationism. Capitalists seek to conserve resources, not because of sentimental feelings about nature or the earth or whales or worry about the well-being of future generations, but simply because every drop of oil, every ton of ore, every shipment of wood saved is a cost reduction and money in the pocket.

  Steven Plaut

  Funny, Animal, Oil

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• The worst enemy of humanity is U.S. capitalism. That is what provokes uprisings like our own, a rebellion against a system, against a neoliberal model, which is the representation of a savage capitalism. If the entire world doesn't acknowledge this reality, that the national states are not providing even minimally for health, education and nourishment, then each day the most fundamental human rights are being violated.

  Evo Morales

  Health, Reality, Worst Enemy

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• Militarism. . . is the chief bulwark of capitalism. When it is that militarism is undermined, capitalism will fail.

  Helen Keller

  Failing, Globalization, Chiefs

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