Quotes and Sayings about Capitalism
"Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism."
- Alain Badiou
(Related: Capitalism, Humanity, Liberal, Nihilism)
"You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing, but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government."
- Bernard Baruch
(Related: Government, Capitalism, Communism, Living, Struggle, Talk)
"We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values."
- Tony Benn
(Related: Change, Society, Values, Capitalism)
"Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream."
- John Berger
(Related: Life, Time, Dream, Capitalism, Culture, Publicity)
"But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world."
- Peter L. Berger
(Related: Society, Capitalism, Economy, Example, World)
"It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term."
- Peter L. Berger
(Related: Capitalism, Economy)
"We can't fool ourselves that they will ever be enough to overthrow Capitalism. If we're serious about that we need to organise ourselves in our workplaces and communities, making the links with other workers internationally."
- John Blair
(Related: Capitalism, Fool, Will, Workers)
"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell."
- Frank Borman
(Related: Christianity, Capitalism, Hell)
"The problem with K-12 education is socialism and the solution is capitalism."
- Peter Brimelow
(Related: Education, Capitalism, Socialism, Solution)
"Whether we look at capitalism, taxes, business, or government, the data show a clear and consistent pattern: 70 percent of Americans support the free enterprise system and are unsupportive of big government."
- Arthur C. Brooks
(Related: Government, Business, Americans, Capitalism, Support, Taxes)
"Socialism is nothing more nor less than the social, political and ideological system which breaks the fetters upon economic growth created under capitalism and opens the way to a new period of economic and social expansion on a much larger scale."
- Earl Browder
(Related: Growth, Capitalism, Nothing, Socialism)
"The dynamics of capitalism is postponement of enjoyment to the constantly postponed future."
- Norman O. Brown
(Related: Capitalism, Enjoyment, Future)
"I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of - of American capitalism."
- Warren Buffett
(Related: American, Capitalism)
"I think President Obama has used the bully pulpit as a way to attack capitalism."
- Jeb Bush
(Related: Capitalism, President)
"Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class."
- Al Capone
(Related: Capitalism, Class)
"This American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it capitalism, call it what you will, gives each and every one of us a great opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it."
- Al Capone
(Related: Opportunity, American, Capitalism, Will)
"Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden."
- Orson Scott Card
(Related: Capitalism, Garden, Unemployment)
"Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system."
- Stokely Carmichael
(Related: Capitalism)
"Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away."
- Fidel Castro
(Related: Money, Capitalism)
"They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?"
- Fidel Castro
(Related: Success, Failure, America, Capitalism, Socialism, Talk)
"I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition."
- Fidel Castro
(Related: War, Capitalism, Causes, Competition, Hypocrisy)
"I have said it already, I am convinced that the way to build a new and better world is not capitalism. Capitalism leads us straight to hell."
- Hugo Chavez
(Related: Capitalism, Hell, World)
"I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism."
- Hugo Chavez
(Related: Capitalism, Socialism, World)
"The left is back, and it's the only path we have to get out of the spot to which the right has sunken us. Socialism builds and capitalism destroys."
- Hugo Chavez
(Related: Capitalism, Right, Socialism)
"I believe the accepted model of capitalism that demands endless growth deserves the blame for the destruction of nature, and it should be displaced. Failing that, I try to work with those companies and help them change the way they think about our resources."
- Yvon Chouinard
(Related: Change, Work, Nature, Growth, Blame, Capitalism, Destruction, Help)
"The kind of capitalism I hate most is crony capitalism, the friends who decide. These are things which should be killed in Russia."
- Anatoly Chubais
(Related: Capitalism, Friends, Hate, Russia)
"There are no two countries with the same style of economic mechanism, with the same capitalism."
- Anatoly Chubais
(Related: Capitalism, Countries, Style)
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Virtue, Blessings, Capitalism, Sharing, Socialism, Vice)
"The way the credit cards were made in the '80s to be a people's form of capitalism and be able to make it so that you could get a loan that you would have been denied previous, now that's the way stocks are."
- Jim Cramer
(Related: People, Capitalism, Cards, Credit, Now)
"Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation."
- Eugene V. Debs
(Related: Capitalism, Chicago)
"America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to."
- Larry Elder
(Related: Government, Failure, Possibility, America, Capitalism, Consequences, Nothing, Practice, Theory)
"Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Capitalism, Result)
"Capitalism works better from every perspective when the economic decision makers are forced to share power with those who will be affected by those decisions."
- Barney Frank
(Related: Power, Decision, Capitalism, Decisions, Perspective, Will)
"It is because the fight against the harshest aspects of unrestricted capitalism is therefore a political problem and not an intellectual one that community action remains so essential."
- Barney Frank
(Related: Action, Capitalism, Community, Fight)
"The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system."
- Milton Friedman
(Related: Capitalism, Greed, Harm, Will)
"History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition."
- Milton Friedman
(Related: History, Capitalism, Freedom)
"The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism."
- Thomas Friedman
(Related: Capitalism, Debate)
"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(Related: Capitalism, Communism, Man)
"The New Deal's enmity for that system of free and competitive private enterprise which we call capitalism was fundamental."
- Garet Garrett
(Related: Capitalism)
"There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft."
- Bill Gates
(Related: People, Capitalism)
"What's immediately profitable is the only kind of logic that capitalism understands."
- Susan George
(Related: Capitalism, Logic)
"The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: People, Civilization, Capitalism, Contradiction, Dawn, Invention, Socialism)
"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: Civilization, Capitalism, Invention)
"In the Europe which was created by the Second World War, divided into two blocks, each in need of a revolution that would end the abuses and injustices of capitalism and the privileges of a bureaucratic caste, collective faith does not exist."
- Juan Goytisolo
(Related: Faith, War, Capitalism, End, Europe, Revolution, World, World war)
"If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women."
- Christopher Hampton
(Related: Women, American, Capitalism, Girls)
"The cure for capitalism's failing would require that a government would have to rise above the interests of one class alone."
- Robert Heilbroner
(Related: Government, Capitalism, Class, Cure)
"I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature."
- Sidney Hook
(Related: Aspirations, Capitalism, Literature, Socialism)
"What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!"
- Henrik Ibsen
(Related: Business, Science, Society, Capitalism, Inventions)
"I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!"
- Henrik Ibsen
(Related: Business, Science, Society, Capitalism, Inventions, Machines)
"In the last quarter of the eighteenth century bourgeois Europe needed to emancipate itself from that combination of feudalism and commercial capitalism which we know as mercantilism."
- C. L. R. James
(Related: Capitalism, Europe)
"Capitalism has socialized production. It has brought thousands of people together in the factory and involved them in new social relationships."
- C. L. R. James
(Related: People, Capitalism, Production, Relationships)
"If it is, in reality, capitalism that is the motor force behind the destructive forms of globalization, then it must be in their capacity to neutralize or transform this particular mode of exploitation that one can best test these various forms of resistance to the West."
- Fredric Jameson
(Related: Capitalism, Exploitation, Force, Globalization, Reality)
"I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy."
- Garry Kasparov
(Related: Capitalism, Democracy, Economy, Liberal, Today)
"The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods."
- John Maynard Keynes
(Related: War, Success, Capitalism)
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
(Related: Men, Belief, Capitalism, Will)
"Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way."
- David Korten
(Related: Power, People, Selling, Buying, Capitalism, Choices)
"Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy."
- David Korten
(Related: Capitalism, Democracy, Enemy)
"Conservatives have no understanding of modern capitalism. They have a distorted understanding of the traditional values they claim to defend."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Values, Capitalism, Understanding)
"It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family."
- Christopher Lasch
(Related: Family, American, Capitalism, Law, Support, Wage, Wages, Will)
"In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy."
- Fran Lebowitz
(Related: Capitalism, Communism, Country, Democracy)
"Fascism is capitalism in decay."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: Capitalism, Fascism)
"If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism."
- Vladimir Lenin
(Related: Capitalism)
"Capitalism attacks and destroys all the finer sentiments of the human heart; it ruthlessly sweeps away old traditions and ideas opposed to its progress, and it exploits and corrupts those things once held sacred."
- Daniel De Leon
(Related: Heart, Progress, Ideas, Capitalism, Old, Traditions)
"In the democratic western countries so-called capitalism leads a saturnalia of "freedom," like a bastard brother of reform."
- Wyndham Lewis
(Related: Brother, Capitalism, Countries, Reform)
"For capitalism, war and peace are business and nothing but business."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Business, Peace, War, Capitalism, Nothing)
"Capitalism is war; socialism is peace."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Peace, War, Capitalism, Socialism)
"Incendiary capitalism is carrying its out evil works more dangerously than ever, and is doing so in the increasingly dangerous neighborhood of the powder kegs that are the great European military powers."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Capitalism, Evil, Military)
"The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: Capitalism, Law)
"So what is so strange about saying I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to reconstruct and reform this nation so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? I want the country to survive. I want the country to succeed."
- Rush Limbaugh
(Related: Capitalism, Country, Liberty, Mission, Nation, Reform, Saying, Succeed, Want)
"World wide capitalism kills more people everyday then Hitler did. And he was crazy."
- Ken Livingstone
(Related: People, Capitalism, World)
"I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones who paid very dearly for those great fortunes."
- Peter Matthiessen
(Related: People, Growth, American, Being, Blood, Capitalism, Poor)
"I invested in many companies, and I'm happy this one worked. This is capitalism. You invest in stock, it goes up, it goes down. You know, if you don't like capitalism, you don't like making money with stock, move to Cuba or China."
- Terry McAuliffe
(Related: Money, Capitalism)
"We modern Marxists regard socialism as a historically brief transitional stage between feudalism and capitalism, necessary only in backward countries."
- John McCarthy
(Related: Capitalism, Countries, Socialism)
"Now a great debate has been born. The thesis is Democratic Socialism. The antithesis is free-market capitalism. The Obama Democrats have posed the challenge. It is now up to the Republicans to pick it up and fight along these lines."
- Dick Morris
(Related: Capitalism, Challenge, Debate, Democrats, Fight, Now, Republicans, Socialism)
"We have two evils to fight, capitalism and racism. We must destroy both racism and capitalism."
- Huey Newton
(Related: Capitalism, Fight, Racism)
"I am a conservative Republican, a firm believer in free market capitalism. A free market system allows all parties to compete, which ensures the best and most competitive project emerges, and ensures a fair, democratic process."
- Sarah Palin
(Related: Capitalism, Conservative, Project, Republican)
"I am going to fight capitalism even if it kills me. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving."
- Sylvia Pankhurst
(Related: People, Capitalism, Fight, Wrong)
"I don't think that capitalism should be unbridled, if by "unbridled" you mean unregulated."
- Chris Patten
(Related: Capitalism)
"A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank."
- Ron Paul
(Related: Money, Capitalism, Creation, Credit, Interest, Sound)
"Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism."
- Ron Paul
(Related: Capitalism)
"Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy."
- Dan Rather
(Related: Americans, Capitalism, Democracy)
"There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country."
- Herbert Read
(Related: People, Capitalism, Country, Marxism, Socialism)
"Under capitalism each individual engages in economic planning."
- George Reisman
(Related: Capitalism, Planning)
"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."
- Pat Robertson
(Related: Women, Capitalism, Children, Feminism, Husbands, Practice, Witchcraft)
"Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."
- Pat Robertson
(Related: Women, Capitalism, Children, Feminism, Husbands, Practice, Witchcraft)
"Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Capitalism, Exercise, Liberty, Principles, Tyranny)
"Following the rise of the Labour Party it seemed reasonable, in 1927, to expect, or at least hope, that co-operation for the common good might gradually replace the competitiveness of capitalism."
- Dora Russell
(Related: Hope, Capitalism, Party)
"We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations."
- Jose Saramago
(Related: Capitalism, World)
"If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state."
- John Ralston Saul
(Related: Capitalism, Democracy, State, Will)
"Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest."
- Joseph A. Schumpeter
(Related: Civilization, Virtue, Capitalism, Interest, Logic)
"Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Power, Belief, Capitalism, Force, Interest, Self, Self interest)
"Fascism is capitalism plus murder."
- Upton Sinclair
(Related: Capitalism, Fascism, Murder)
"It's not difficult in South Africa for the ordinary person to see the link between capitalism and racist exploitation, and when one sees the link one immediately thinks in terms of a socialist alternative."
- Joe Slovo
(Related: Capitalism, Exploitation)
"I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child."
- Tavis Smiley
(Related: Capitalism, Want)
"The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Possibility, Capitalism, Ideology, Liberty)
"Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it."
- Thomas Sowell
(Related: Capitalism, Gender, Race)
"Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes."
- Oswald Spengler
(Related: Capitalism, Nothing, Socialism)
"The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Capitalism, Competition, Job, Wrong)
"Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism 'inevitably' caused war; and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914."
- A. J. P. Taylor
(Related: War, Being, Capitalism, First, Right, State, World, World war)
"There is a serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants."
- Mao Tse Tung
(Related: Capitalism)
"One might have thought that the most significant change in the film industry that would come about with a transition from the communist economy to capitalism would fundamentally concern the sources of funding."
- Andrzej Wajda
(Related: Change, Thought, Capitalism, Concern, Economy, Film)
"What breaks capitalism, all that will ever break capitalism, is capitalists. The faster they run the more strain on their heart."
- Raymond Williams
(Related: Heart, Capitalism, Will)
"Capitalism is not an economic system, but a world-outlook, or rather, a part of a whole world-outlook."
- Francis Parker Yockey
(Related: Capitalism, World)
"For reforms ameliorate the situation of the working class, they lighten the weight of the chains labour is burdened with by capitalism, but they are not sufficient to crush capitalism and to emancipate the workers from their tyranny."
- Clara Zetkin
(Related: Capitalism, Class, Tyranny, Weight, Workers)
"Liberal democracy - as you know, in the old days, we were saying we want socialism with a human face. Today's left effectively offers global capitalism with a human face, more tolerance, more rights and so on. So the question is, is this enough or not? Here I remain a Marxist: I think not."
- Slavoj Zizek
(Related: Capitalism, Democracy, Rights, Liberal, Old, Question, Saying, Socialism, Today, Tolerance, Want)