Capitalism Quotes - Page 12

• The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.

  David Harvey

  Political, Economy, Social

  "The Limits To Capital". Book by David Harvey, 1982.

  60 Copy quote

  Show source

• America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.

  David Foster Wallace

  Country, America, Long

  Source: www.nybooks.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In response to criticism of its treatment of killer whales, Sea World said it will build them a larger habitat. When asked for comment, killer whales said, 'Hey, you know what's a larger habitat?' THE OCEAN.

  Conan O'Brien

  Nature, Ocean, Health

  14 Copy quote

• The Internet is disrupting every media industry...people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. And Amazon is not happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling.

  Jeff Bezos

  Leadership, Book, Technology

  6 Copy quote

• The Congressional Budget Office is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation, and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.

  Newt Gingrich

  Leadership, Money, Party

  "Gingrich: CBO a 'reactionary socialist institution'" By Charles Riley, money.cnn.com. November 22, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Capitalism might be defined, if we wish to be scientific, as a form of economic organization motivated by the pursuit of profit within a price structure.

  Carroll Quigley

  Organization, Wish, Might

  Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The American capitalists are richer and stronger than their counterparts in other lands. They are also younger and more ignorant, and therefore more inclined to seek a rough settlement of difficulties without diplomatic subtlety and finesse. All that does not change the fact that American capitalism operates according to the same laws as the others, is confronted with the same fundamental problems, and is headed toward the same catastrophe.

  James P. Cannon

  Law, Land, Ignorant

  "Fascism and The Workers’ Movement". The Militant, www.marxists.org. March-April 1954.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the biggest lies in capitalism is that companies like competition. They don't. Nobody likes competition.

  Eliot Spitzer

  Lying, Competition, Likes

  "How Wall Street Scams Counties Into Bankruptcy" by William D. Cohan, www.bloomberg.com. July 02, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the press writes scare stories about the global labor supply draining jobs from rich to poor places, the story is usually presented as a "race to the bottom" simply in terms of wages. Capitalism supposedly looks for labor wherever labor is cheapest. This story is half wrong. A kind of cultural selection is also at work, so that jobs leave high-wage countries like the United States and Germany, but migrate to low-wage economies with skilled, sometimes overqualified workers.

  Richard Sennett

  Country, Jobs, Writing

  Richard Sennett (2007). “The Culture of the New Capitalism”, p.87, Yale University Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fundamental differences between Marxian and traditional orthodox economics are, first, that the orthodox economists accept the capitalist system as part of the eternal order of Nature, while Marx regards it as a passing phase in the transition from the feudal economy of the past to the socialist economy of the future.

  Joan Robinson

  Nature, Money, Work

  Joan Robinson (1967). “Essay on Marxian Economics”, p.1, Springer

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Marx, 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 Robinson

  Law, Progress, Details

  Joan Robinson (1967). “Essay on Marxian Economics”, p.95, Springer

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.

  Joan Robinson

  Running, Lying, Overcoming

  Joan Robinson (1973). “Economic heresies: some old-fashioned questions in economic theory”

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Litmus test: If you can't describe Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage and explain why people find it counterintuitive, you don't know enough about economics to direct any criticism or praise at "capitalism" because you don't know what other people are referring to when they use that word.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Law, People, Criticism

  Comment as Eliezer Yudkowsky @yudkowsky, www.facebook.com. June 10, 2012.

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• Moral capitalism is possible; if not, its strictures are only a kind of misleading vanity, the rhetoric of a secular piety.

  Stephen Young

  Vanity, Moral, Kind

  Stephen Young (2003). “Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good”, p.9, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Capitalism is of this material world; it provides us with the means to live; it empowers us within the known world of sense and human reason. If it is to be measured by a strict standard of holiness, by religious normativity alone, then there can never be a moral capitalism.

  Stephen Young

  Religious, Mean, Empowering

  Stephen Young (2003). “Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good”, p.9, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We live in a capitalist system; anyone who believes they are above this system or purer than this system, even while shopping at the cute organic market across the street or taking a hiking vacation to Guatemala, is certifiable.

  Katy Lederer

  Cute, Believe, Vacation

  "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Capitalist". Interview with Benjamin Samuel, www.gelfmagazine.com. January 19, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Technological change can become 'fetishized' as a 'thing in itself', as an exogenous guiding force in the history of capitalism.

  David Harvey

  Technological Change, Force, Technological

  "The Limits To Capital". Book by David Harvey, 1982.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I live my life through the prism of capitalism and physiological limits and eventualities. In all of that, there is no spirituality required. No God and karma is needed for the numbers. I live my life by the numbers. Not only am I an American, I am an Americanist.

  Henry Rollins

  Karma, Numbers, Limits

  Source: www.sinicalmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Capitalism is not a perfect system. It may be better than all the other systems, but it's not a perfect system.

  Howard Warren Buffett

  Perfect, May

  "Warren Buffett: I Haven't Seen As Much Economic Fear In My Adult Lifetime". "The Charlie Rose Show", www.cnbc.com. October 1, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• All industries are brought under the control of such people [film producers] by Capitalism. If the capitalists let themselves be seduced from their pursuit of profits to the enchantments of art, they would be bankrupt before they knew where they were. You cannot combine the pursuit of money with the pursuit of art.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Movie, Art, People

  4 Copy quote

• American capitalism has been both overpraised and overindicted. It is neither the Plumed Knight nor the monstrous Robber Baron.

  Max Lerner

  Knights, American Capitalism, Robber Baron

  5 Copy quote

• The fascinating thing to a dispassionate observer about the structure of life in the Soviet Union is that in their efforts to produce an unknown that we may let its ideologists call Socialism the Communist dictators have produced a brutal approximation of monopoly Capitalism, a system that has all the disadvantages of our own, with none of the palliatives which come to us from surviving competition and from the essential division of economic and political power which has so far made it possible for the humane traditions of the Western world to continue.

  John Dos Passos

  Effort, Political, Competition

  4 Copy quote

• What kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work - and masses of unemployed?

  Andy Grove

  People, Poverty, Kind

  "How America Can Create Jobs" by Andy Grove, www.bloomberg.com. July 2, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We can't afford the wrath of Heaven. We survived a deluge by the skin of our teeth, but an economic crisis would be disastrous.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Wrath, Heaven, Skins

  4 Copy quote

• In colleges, there are no gender separations in courses of study, and students can freely choose their majors. There are no male and female math classes. But women generally choose college courses that pay less in the labor market. Those are the choices that women themselves make. Those choices contribute to the pay gap.

  Phyllis Schlafly

  Education, Money, Work

  Phyllis Schlafly (2015). “Phyllis Schlafly: Volume I”, p.60, Creators Publishing

  8 Copy quote

  Show source