Quotes about capitalism
page 11

“The bourgeois never included the ownership of capital as one of the social restraints that should be abolished, for the simple reason that it was not to him a restraint at all. It never therefore entered his head to regard it as such, and he saw nothing inconsistent in calling for the abolition of privilege, monopoly, and so forth, while hanging on to his capital.”

Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937) British Marxist literary critic, journalist and writer

Studies in a Dying Culture (1938), Pacifism and Violence: A Study in Bourgeois Ethics

“Even in its comparatively tame, fully mathematico-scientifically respectable variants, feedback causality tends to auto-production, and thus to time-anomaly. (…) As it mechanizes, capital approximates ever more closely to an auto-productive circuit in which it appears—on the screen—as something like the 'father' of itself”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

M → C → M'
Templexity: Disordered Loops Through Shanghai Time (2014), §9.4

Appearance, Time

“Cameron made the Hugo Young speech, where he claimed the co-operative movement, building societies, the mutuals, the early trade unions for the Conservatives, and we were completely silent. That's linked to the excessive statism of Brown. We had to reclaim Labour history. It was also a way of talking about capitalism again, and resistance to capitalism. And working [in London Citizens] with low-paid people, most of whom were women, had reminded me of their concern for their parents and their children, and their commitment to work and not wanting to be on welfare.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The Guardian article, 19 July 2011 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/jul/19/lord-glasman-radical-traditionalist

Women, Children, People, Way

“We should rebuild a just and harmonious society, where amicability exists between labor and capital, the younger and older generations, men and women, as well as concerned parties in the recent debates about legalizing same-sex marriage.”

Wu Den-yih (1948) Taiwanese politician

Wu Den-yih (2017) cited in: " Wu pledges just governance if elected http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2017/01/10/2003662833" in Taipei Times, 10 January 2017.

Women, Men, Marriage, Sex

“I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

World, Birth, Forgetting

“Just because Charlie and I can clearly see dramatic growth ahead for an industry does not mean we can judge what its profit margins and returns on capital will be as a host of competitors battle for supremacy. At Berkshire we will stick with businesses whose profit picture for decades to come seems reasonably predictable. Even then, we will make plenty of mistakes.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1994 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1994.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Business

“The free economy is not the enemy but the friend of social capital.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 9.

“New York used to be the financial capital of the world. It's no longer even the financial capital of the U. S. For the moment, Washington is.”

Ian Bremmer (1969) American political scientist

"The New Capitals of Capital," http://fearandloathingingtown.blogspot.com/2009/03/quote-of-day_21.html Forbes (March 19, 2009).

World

“The soft seduction of consumer global capitalism reduce the nations of the West to a rootless mass of Americanised consumers, without identity, without pride and without a future. Children identify with the grotesque and vulgar instead of noble heroes and beautiful princesses in castles. Teenagers ape the antics of degenerate pop-stars whose example leads hundreds of thousands into the living death of drug addiction, not to mention the tragedy of the image conscious girls (mainly) who feel compelled to starve themselves to get "the look" and of course the spiralling number of abortions. Adults perform meaningless jobs, in conditions of mind-destroying boredom, to earn enough money to buy the latest needlessly created want to be pushed on television as the thing without which their neighbours will regard them as worthless failures. Old folk die unnoticed and lie rotting for weeks, even months, in barred and bolted flats in inhuman tower blocks, unofficial prisons which become tombs for those who no longer have any economic value. Do not be fooled by the glossy packaging of the consumer society. Where state socialism was a creed of terror and stagnation, capitalism is one of apathy and death.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, The Deadly Twins.

Death, Money, Children, Lie

“An ideal objectivist society with a limited government is superior to an anarcho-capitalist society in precisely the same way that an ideal socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. Socialism does better with perfect people than anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no argument against carrying an umbrella.”

David D. Friedman book The Machinery of Freedom

Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, p.134

People, Way, Sun, Perfection

“Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

CD-ROM marking 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, quoted in * 2012-09-27
Corn
David
w:David Corn
New Romney Video: In 1985, He Said Bain Would "Harvest" Companies for Profits
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/1985-romney-bain-harvest-firms-profits-video
2012-10-03
1985

Partnership

“Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.”

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. (1954) American activist

In "Crimes against nature" in Rolling Stone magazine (11 December 2003).

Democracy, Understanding, Country

“we often observe that there is abundance of capital to be had at low rates of interest, while there are also large numbers of artisans starving for want of employment.”

William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy

Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VIII, Concluding Remarks, p. 215.

“The war of 1914-18 was imperialist (that is, an annexationist, predatory, war of plunder) on the part of both sides; it was a war for the division of the world, for the partition and repartition of colonies and spheres of influence of finance capital.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

War, World, Parting

“Like a forensic accountant trying to solve a corporate fraud, following the trail of money around the circle is a good way to understand what actually happens as capitalism unfolds.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 2, Chapter 10, Closing The Little Circle, p. 121
Economics For Everyone (2008)

Money, Way, Understanding, Fraud

“While [European] national cultures were concocted to distinguish one economic unit of capital from another, civilizational thinking was invented to unify these cultures against their colonial consequences. Islamic, Indian, or African civilizations were invented contrapuntally by Orientalism…in order to match, balance and thus authenticate ‘Western Civilization’.”

Hamid Dabashi (1951) American academic

For the Last Time Civilization. http://iss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/16/3/361

Thinking

“During the Cold War, widespread alcoholism was always seen in the West as evidence that life under Communism was so dismal that Russians needed large quantities of vodka to get through the day. Under capitalism, however, Russians drinks more than twice as much alcohol as they used to - and they are reaching for harder painkillers as well.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)

Life, War, Alcohol, Communication

“The only solution to the contradictions of capitalism entails the abolition of wage labour.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 12, Production Of Spatial Configurations, p. 385

“Under the conditions of the new mode, capital was able to embark on a process of continual internal and international migration, drawing ever more groups of people into its orbit and reproducing its strategic relationships wherever and whenever it took root.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 9, Industrial Revolution, p. 295.

People, Drawing

“All loved Art in a seemly way
With an earnest soul and a capital A.”

James Jeffrey Roche (1847–1908) American journalist

The V-a-s-e, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love, Art, Way, Soul

“My real object is the establishment of jihãd against the Sikhs of the Punjab and not to stay in the countries of Afghanistan and Yagistan. The long-haired infidels who have seized sovereignty over Punjab are very experienced, clever and deceitful… The ill-natured Sikhs and the ill-fated polytheists have gained control over the Western parts of India from the banks of Indus to the capital city of Delhi.”

Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786–1831) Muslim activist

Syed Ahmad Barelvi. Letter written to his contemporary Muslim magnates, cited in Qeyamuddin Ahmad, The Wahabi Movement in India, Calcutta, 1966, p. 358

Fate, Nature, Parting, Country

“By capital we understand everything that, from the special use by the individual, or from its being placed at the disposal of others, produces a revenue or rent. We do not inquire into its origin, or ask whether it has been acquired by inheritance or by labour.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 15.

Understanding

“In view of the undoubted honesty of those broad sections of the mass believers in revolutionary defencism who accept the war only as a necessity, and not as a means of conquest, in view of the fact that they are being deceived by the bourgeoisie, it is necessary with particular thoroughness, persistence and patience to explain their error to them, and to prove that without overthrowing capital it is impossible to end the war by a truly democratic peace.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

April Thesis (1917)

War, Peace, Error, Patience

“This article aims at proposing some elements for a grounded theory of the network society. The network society is the social structure characteristic of the Information Age, as tentatively identified by empirical, cross-cultural investigation. It permeates most societies in the world, in various cultural and institutional manifestations, as the industrial society characterized the social structure of both capitalism and statism for most of the twentieth century.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society (2000), p. 5

Age, World

“I myself am no opponent of State intervention. I have never been, and never shall be, as soon as it is shown to me that State intervention can achieve some good end which cannot be reached without it. And I hope that opinion will soon turn in the direction of municipal intervention in these affairs, wherever municipal intervention is adequate, and I will tell you why…I believe that in municipalities the area of supervision is sufficiently small, that people concerned come up in sufficiently close quarters with the matters of administration to enable them to avoid all the dangers, risks, and wastes to which the general state of capitals is open.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech to the annual meeting of the National Liberal Federation (20 November 1890), quoted in 'Mr. Morley At Sheffield', The Times (21 November 1890), p. 10.

People, Hope

“Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 140 (1972 edition)

Exercises, Nature

“Mrs. Clinton’s riches are not capitalism’s reward for hard work. Hillary has accrued wealth by using the predatory political process to wield power over others.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Paltrow of politics (minus looks & ethics),” http://praag.org/?p=14157 Praag.org, June 14, 2014. 2010s, 2014

Wealth

“I think the reason it’s cheaper is, first of all, we are a private entity and we have a very lean system in here. What we have been able to do here at SpaceX is to cherry-pick, you know, the top one or two percent and give them, you know, capital to execute well and a clear mission, which is low cost, reliable access to space, and no other constraints.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Thinking

“I wish in closing to emphasize how little corporate philanthrophy (the practical meaning of “creative capitalism,” a terrible expression that implies nonaltruistic capitalism is uncreative) is actually philanthropic, in the sense of being driven by altruism rather than by profit maximization.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

" Against Creative Capitalism, Part Two https://web.archive.org/web/20080821055810/http://creativecapitalism.typepad.com:80/creative_capitalism/2008/08/against-creativ.html" (2008), published in Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders.

Sense

“Capitalism is too complicated a system for a newly independent nation. Hence the need for a socialistic society.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957), p. x.

“In fact, in the plantation areas conditions amounting to slavery were re‑established by the planters with the acquiescence of the Government. Some idea of the misery to which the population of these areas was reduced by this system of merciless exploitation in the interests of British capital may be gained from the Bengal Indigo Commission's Report and from some of the literature of the period. Nil Darpan or the Mirror of Indigo, a Bengali drama, created a sensation by throwing a little light on this dark corner of Britain's action in India, and the reaction in official circles was so great that a European missionary, Mr Long, who translated and published it in English, was fined and imprisoned. During the whole of this period, in fact till the rise of nationalism after the Great War, conditions in plantations were of a kind which showed the worst features of European relations with Asia.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

War, Literature, Idea, Light

“Lincoln's purpose in promoting Whig capitalism was not self-interest per se, but capitalism's necessary connection to equality, self-transformation, and social mobility, which were Lincoln's real goals. The essence of a free society, Lincoln said in 1859 (and here he was pirating J. S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy), was the openness it afforded to each of its citizens to make of themselves whatever they could, without the handicap of artificial inequalities based on status, nationality, or race. One could not do this in an economic environment governed by status, racial stratification, or centralized planning. Lincoln loved the Declaration's affirmation of all men's natural equality; but that equality would be meaningless without the unfettered opportunity to use it for something. If a national bank, tariffs, and "international improvements" promoted these opportunities, then they really were serving the interests of the natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Letter (2010)

Love, Life, Men, Happiness

“Perfect competition must hold in product and factor markets, and also (and importantly) in capital markets. The assumption has two essential features: economic agents must be price takers; and they must have equal power.”

Nicholas Barr (1943) British economist

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 4, State Intervention, p. 73

Perfection

“In physics, I sprung on him as we sat in the Taco Bell drive-through, what does the capital letter W stand for?”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Dreamland (2000)

“The West never came close to proletarian revolution. The Left likes to believe that it did. They like to argue that 'Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself'. This is another way of saying that John Maynard Keynes saved capitalism from itself. Both arguments are incorrect. Roosevelt and Keynes met only once. Roosevelt correctly assessed Keynes as a mathematician, not an economist. This was true. Keynes got his degree in mathematics, not economics. Roosevelt was the source of what we call Keynesianism, 1933-36, not Keynes, whose General Theory appeared in 1936. But scholars like to believe that academic arguments shape the world. They don't. They conform what has already begun to take root in the thinking and practices of the general public. When men decided that "thou shalt not steal" means "thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote," the Keynesian worldview was born. This view is dominant today. Marxism is dead. So is " means this: it is immoral to steal, with or without majority vote. This has nothing to do with the mode of production.”

Gary North (economist) (1942) American Christian Reconstructionist and economic historian

"Cultural Marxism Is an Oxymoron" http://www.garynorth.com/public/12623.cfm (1 July 2014), Gary North.

Men, World, Way, Mathematics

“If one fourth of the capital of a country were suddenly destroyed, or entirely transferred to a different part of the world, without any other cause occurring of a diminished demand for commodities, this scantiness of capital would certainly occasion great inconvenience to consumers, and great distress among the working classes; but it would be attended with great advantages to the remaining capitalists.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On The Progress of Wealth, Section X, p. 414 (See also: Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, Chapter 25, Section 4(e), p. 742
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

World, Parting, Country

“Between Capitalism and Socialism there is no relationship of true and false. Both are instincts, and have the same historical rank, but one of them belongs to the Past, and one to the Future. Capitalism is a product of Rationalism and Materialism, and was the ruling force of the 19th century. Socialism is the form of an age of political Imperialism, of Authority, of historical philosophy, of superpersonal political imperative.”

Francis Parker Yockey book Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics

Source: Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics (1948), Chapter titled: Marxism, p. 84-85 Noontide Press edition.

Age, Past, Future, Falseness

“Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

"The American Movement" http://www.marxists.org/archive/debs/works/1898/america.htm (written 1898, first published 1908)

Tear, Water, Appearance

“Capitalism is above the law; it's said it don't count 'less it sells.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Union Sundown

Law

“Perhaps more striking is the accuracy of many of Marx’s best-known qualitative predictions about the tendencies of capitalist development: capitalism continues to conquer the globe; its effect is the gradual erasure of cultural and regional identities; growing economic inequality is the norm in the advanced capitalist societies; where capitalism triumphs, market norms gradually dominate all spheres of life, public and private; class position continues to be the defining determinant of political outlook; the dominant class dominates the political process which, in turn, does its bidding; and so on.”

Brian Leiter (1963) American philosopher and legal scholar

"The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud"

Life

“Even in Scandinavia, where social democratic institutions were far more culturally ingrained, membership of the EU—or even just participation in the World Trade Organization and other international agencies—appeared to constrain locally-initiated legislation. In short, social democracy seemed doomed by that same internationalization which its early theorists had so enthusiastically adumbrated as the future of capitalism.
From this perspective, social democracy—like liberalism—was a byproduct of the rise of the European nation-state: a political idea keyed to the social challenges of industrialization in developed societies. Not only was there no ‘socialism’ in America, but social democracy as a working compromise between radical goals and liberal traditions lacked widespread support in any other continent. There was no shortage of enthusiasm for revolutionary socialism in much of the non-Western world, but the distinctively European compromise did not export well.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Conclusion: What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?

World, Democracy, Idea, Support

“Our future rates of gain will fall far short of those achieved in the past. Berkshire's capital base is now simply too large to allow us to earn truly outsized returns. If you believe otherwise, you should consider a career in sales but avoid one in mathematics (bearing in mind that there are really only three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't).”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1998 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1998pdf.pdf Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

People, World, Mathematics, Past

“Early in 1861 the Rebellion broke out, and all minor affairs were swallowed up in the major one of preserving the Union. The troops were recalled from the Navajo country to take part in the struggle, and hardly had they left their stations when the 'war-whoop' of the relentless foe smote the hearing of our peaceable citizens with appalling destruction, the more appalling from being unexpected—owing to their faith in the treaty just concluded. …and the Navajos were consequently undisturbed in their infernal work of destruction. Well did they take advantage of this opportunity. Never before were their atrocities so numerous. They overran the whole country, and carrying their boldness so far as to enter the settlements and towns, carrying off their stock from before the people's eyes, and murdering citizens, even within two miles of the capital. No place was secure, and every town and hamlet became a fortification to protect its inhabitants. …Nor were the Mescalero Apaches idle. They took advantage of the withdrawal of the troops from fort stations to pillage and lay waste the flourishing settlements established on the Rio Bonito, Tularosa, and adjacent streams, and this they did effectually—out of a well cultivated country making a desert.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864)

War, People, Faith, Parting

“… no diplomatic intervention will ever be made by any government that I lead in support of any individual terrorist's life. We have only indicated in the past, and will maintain a policy in the future, of intervening diplomatically in support of Australian nationals who face capital sentences abroad.”

Kevin Rudd (1957) Australian politician, 26th Prime Minister of Australia

ALP in 'me-too' policy mess over death penalty
Response to a backlash following statements made by Robert McClelland, days before the fifth anniversary of the 2002 Bali bombings, who said that Labor would campaign internationally to stop executions of terrorists.
2002

Life, Support, Past, Future

“The laboring classes constitute the main part of our population. They should be protected in their efforts peaceably to assert their rights when endangered by aggregated capital, and all statutes on this subject should recognize the care of the State for honest toil, and be framed with a view of improving the condition of the workingman.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

Letter accepting the nomination for governor of New York (October 1882); later quoted in his letter to the Democratic National Convention (18 August 1884).

Effort, Parting

“The economic and technological achievements of industrialization in this period were fundamentally mistaken. …based upon plundering the natural capital of the globe that was created over millions of years: the plundering of the soils and their fertility; the plundering of human communities whether they were our own or someone else's.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Communication, Nature

““To be born,” they say, “is a felony--it is a capital crime, for which sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that, compared with the eternity you now enjoy? And even though the sentence were commuted, and you were allowed to live on for ever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that execution would be the greatest mercy to you.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Source: Erewhon (1872), Ch. 19

Life, Time

“Capitalism will inevitably find itself face to face with a starving multitude of unemployed workers demanding food or destruction of the social order that has starved them and robbed them of their jobs.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

What is the IWW? (1918)
Source: [What is the IWW?, Helen, Keller, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/18_01_x01.htm, 1918, January, December 27 2016]

Food

“For the early Greek writers Ethiopia was less a geographical location than a state of mind. For Greeks and Romans generally, Ethiopians meant dark-skinned peoples who lived south of Egypt. At times the reference was so vague as to include peoples from West Africa, Arabia, and India. At times it was more localized, referring to the Nubian kingdom of Kush, with its capital first at Napata and later at Meroe. What was constant was that the name Ethiopian denoted a person of dark color — literally, of burnt face — and that it connoted, above all else, remoteness.”

Donald N. Levine (1931–2015) sociologist

Donald N. Levine (2014), Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society. p. 1

People, Color, Time, Personality

“Modern monopolist capitalism on a world-wide scale — imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable under such an economic system, as long as private property in the means of production exists.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917)

War, World

“The situation also gave U. N. Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali a chance to start the U. N.'s disegagement from Bosnia, something he had long wanted to do. After a few meetings with him, I concluded that this elegant and subtle Egyptian, whose Coptic family could trace its origins back over centuries, had disdain for the fractious and firty peoples of the Balkans. Put bluntly, he never liked the place. In 1992, during his only visit to Sarajevo, he made the comment that shocked the journalists on the day I arrived in the beleaguered capital: "Bosnia is a rich man's war. I understand your frustration, but you have a situation here that is better than ten other places in the world. … I can give you a list." He complained many times that Bosnia was eating up his budget, diverting him from other priorities, and threatening the whole U. N. system. "Bosnia has created a distortion in the work of the U. N.", he said just before Srebrenica. Sensing that our diplomatic efforts offered an opportunity to disengage, he informed the Security Council on September 18 that he would be ready to end the U. N. role in the forme Yugoslavia, and allow all key aspects of implementation to be placed with others. Two days later, he told Madeleine Albright that the Contact Group should create its own mechanism for implementation - thus volunteering to reduce the U. N.'s role at a critical moment. Ironically, his weakness simplified our task considerably.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), pp. 174-175

War, People, World, Family

“But at the moment in India… the Muslims are so few that they are like salt (in a large dish)… However, after a few years when in the capital and the regions and all the small towns, when the Muslims are well established and the troops are larger… it would be possible to give Hindus, the choice of death or Islam.”

Iltutmish (1210–1236) Sultan of Mamluk Sultanate

Ziyauddin Barani, Sana-i-Muhammadi, trs. in Medieval India Quarterly, (Aligarh), I, Part III, 100-105. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5

Death

“It is the welfare state that has made capitalism, with all its attendant benefits of economic growth, politically feasible…”

Nicholas Barr (1943) British economist

Source: Economics Of The Welfare State (Fourth Edition), Chapter 15, Conclusion, p. 359

“Upon completion of the centennial of your birth – and this time only – we have come to address some remarks at your graveside. We report to you, Rosh Betar, that Jerusalem, the city that has become bound together, the eternal capital of Israel and of the Land of Israel, shall not be subjected to any division and is our liberated and indivisible capital and so it shall remain from generation to generation.
The western part of the Land of Israel is entirely under our control and it shall not be partitioned anymore. No part of this land shall be given over to a foreign administration, to foreign sovereignty.
We believe that a day will come when the two parts of the Land of Israel shall establish, peacefully, in agreement and understanding a covenant of alliance, a free confederation, for the purpose of join cooperation”

Menachem Begin (1913–1992) Israeli politician and Prime Minister

Prime Minister Menachem Begin Speech At The Grave Of His Boss Ze’ev Jabotinsky http://www.jewocity.com/blog/prime-minister-menachem-begin-speech-at-the-grave-of-his-boss-zeev-jabotinsky-never-before-published/4566 For the New Year: Words at the Grave of Jabotinsky http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12196

Birth, Understanding, Time, Parting

“The nightmare of every government on earth is a million people assembled in the town square of your capital city, demanding that you pack up to Switzerland. no body can say No to a million people on the streets.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

History Ends in Green (1983)

People

“Your Excellency undoubtedly has frequently had under consideration a proper position for winter-quarters. It is not always in the power of a General to take a position most favorable to his wishes, on ac count of provision and forage, or to place himself in the most advantageous point of view for covering the country and securing his capital posts. A certainty with respect to provision and forage is an object of the first consideration in taking a position. All inferior evils, of whatever nature, may, in some sort, be remedied by foresight and precaution; but there is no contending with hunger. Therefore, what would be considered only as secondary objects in some cases, become principals here.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (November 1779)

Hunger, Nature, Winter, Evil

“…it is preposterous to suppose that a thought could for a moment have been entertained that the President, placed at the capital, in the center of the country, could better understand the wants and wishes of the people than their own immediate representatives, who spend a part of every year among them, living with them, often laboring with them, and bound to them by the triple tie of interest, duty, and affection.”

William Henry Harrison (1773–1841) American general and politician, 9th President of the United States (in office in 1841)

Inaugural address (March 4, 1841)

People, Understanding, Parting, Country

“The letters Z, O and O dominate the front entrance gates of a capital city zoo. They are made of glass and they tower up two giraffes high. They are the width of one elephant and the colour of bottled blue ink.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

A Zed and Two Noughts

“It is difficult to deny at this point, isn't it? Isn't it? Is it a little hard to deny that radicals, Islamicists, Communists, socialists will work together against Israel, against capitalism, and they'll try to work together to overturn stability? Who in the media is telling you this? Who? NAME THEM! Where are they? How can they possibly deny it at this point? And why wouldn't they tell you these things? Why?”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2011-02-22
Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2011-02-24
Jon Bershad
Beck To The Media: How Can You Possibly Deny What I'm Saying At This Point?
Mediaite
2011-02-22
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/glenn-beck-to-the-media-how-can-you-possibly-deny-what-im-saying-at-this-point/
2011-02-24
Beck Blows His Stack: "How Can They Possibly Deny" That I Was Right About The Coming Islamo-Commie Global Takeover?
2011-02-22
Media Matters for America
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201102220044
2011-02-24
2010s, 2011

“The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islam, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustan by the illumination of its guidance… On the other side, so much dust arose from the battered temple of Somnat that even the sea was not able to lay it, and on the right hand and on the left hand the army has conquered from sea to sea, and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus, in which Satanism has prevailed since the time of the Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultan's destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first holy expedition against Deogir,44so that the flames of the light of the law illumine all these unholy countries, and places for the criers to prayer are exalted on high, and prayers are read in mosques. Allah be praised!'…'On Sunday, the 23rd, after holding a council of chief officers, he [Malik Kafur, converted Hindu and commander of the Muslim army] took a select body of cavalry with him and pressed on against Billal Deo, and on the 5th of Shawwal reached the fort of Dhur Sammund after a difficult march of twelve days over the hills and valleys, and through thorny forests. 'The fire-worshipping' Rai, when he learnt that 'his idol-temple was likely to be converted into a mosque,' despatched Kisu Mal' The commander replied that he was sent with the object of converting him to Muhammadanism, or of making him a zimmi, and subject to pay tax, or of slaying him if neither of these terms were assented to. When the Rai received this reply, he said he was ready to give up all he possessed, except his sacred thread.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 85-89
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

God, Law, Light, Time

“Neither Capitalism nor Socialism can pretend to be an ideology. They are merely methods for dividing ownership and income. What is most peculiar for such theoretically practical methodologies, which are also theoretically opposed to each other, is that neither of them has ever existed, except in a highly tentative form. And even then they are invariably mixed together. Their mutually exclusive vocabularies have more to do with basic similarities than with differences.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Voltaire's Bastards (1992)

“It would not be incorrect to say that all capital is invisible value, in that it is the present value, not of physical things, but of the hopes of the future aroused through confidence in the now invisible but expected transactions of the future.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 25

Hope, Confidence, Future

“Capitalism is hard to reason with, but it vividly understands the fist of the working-class, and the Bolsheviks’ unforgettable honorary deed — no matter how the future may turn out, is that they for the first time in world history have shown the tormenters of humanity, an example of power that truly acts, not just talks. The fist in the face, that is the only argument capitalism understands, and Bolshevism has used the fist, hard, very hard but certainly justified.”

Ture Nerman (1886–1969) Swedish socialist

Folkets Dagblad - Politiken (5 May 1919)
Sourced quotes

World, History, Understanding, Time

“Engels feared that the Socialists, in order to gain adherents in the electoral struggles rapidly, would make promises which were contrary to Marxist doctrine. The antisemites told the peasants and the small shopkeepers that they would protect them from the development of capitalism. Engels thought that an imitation of this procedure would be dangerous, since, in his opinion, the social revolution could only be realised when capitalism had almost completely destroyed the small proprietors and small industries; if the Socialists, then, endeavoured to hinder this evolution, they would ultimately compromise their own cause.”

Georges Sorel book Reflections on Violence

Reflections on Violence, London: UK, George Allen & Unwin, (reprinted in Saxony 1925) p. 180

Fear

“The signal failure of the academic Marxists is in their obliviousness to the transformation of modern labor. In the age of mass media, power has shifted its meaning and loci. Capitalism, whatever its problems, remains the most efficient economic mechanism yet to bring the highest quality of life to the greatest number. Because I have studied the past, I know that, in America and under capitalism, I am the freest woman in history. Union blue-collar jobs now routinely pay higher salaries than are earned by most teachers. Physical labor, as a concrete skill occupation, is free of the soul-destroying office politics suffers by the Marxists' demonized managerial class, who take their jobs home with them and are in a continual funk of anxiety and neurosis. … Unharried weekend leisure time is the center of working-class American life in ways the academic Marxists, resentfully marking papers and endlessly pressed for time, simply don't see.</b”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, pp. 247

Life, Age, Way, Home

“In Russia during the war, you seldom spoke of Communism versus capitalism. In the first place, we were then comrades-in-arms and the subject was not important. In the second place, the official line of the inevitable struggle between capitalism and Communism was a bit confused. Marshal of the Soviet Union Josef Stalin had indicated to Commander-in-Chief Franklin Roosevelt that the two systems could live in Diplomat-at-Large Wendell Willkie's One World side by side.”

Bill Downs (1914–1978) American journalist

A Cake of Soap (1948)

War, World, Communication

“Thinking should become your capital asset, whatever ups and downs you may come across in your life.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (1931–2015) 11th President of India, scientist and science administrator

Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

Life, Thinking

“And in the air are no streets, no channels, no point where one can say of an antagonist, "If he wants to reach my capital he must come by here." In the air all directions lead everywhere.”

H. G. Wells book The War in the Air

The War in the Air (1908)

“Modern militarism is the result of capitalism. In both its forms it is the “vital expression” of capitalism — as a military force used by the capitalist states in their external conflicts and as a weapon in the hands of the ruling classes for suppressing every kind of movement, economic and political, of the proletariat.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Collected Works, Vol. 15, pp. 191–201.
Collected Works

“Capital has just become completely disconnected from the people. Labour was born in the world to resist the domination of capital. That’s our thing. So we say that five percent of the bailout should be used to recapitalise local banks. It’s our money anyway. Those local banks should only lend in the area that they’re in. Germany’s a very successful, a very, very successful example of how this can work.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

Interview with Australian Fabians: http://www.fabians.org.au/interview_with_maurice_glasman

Money, People, World, Success

“If the country is to flourish, capital must be invested in enterprise. But those who seek to draw upon other people's money must be wholly candid regarding the facts on which the investor's judgment is asked.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Statement on Signing the Securities Bill http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=14654 (27 May 1933) 1930s

Money, People, Drawing, Country

“The Russian economic system is state capitalism, there called state-socialism or even communism, with production directed by a state bureaucracy under the leadership of the Communist Party. The state officials, forming the new ruling class, have the disposal over the product, hence over the surplus-value, whereas the workers receive wages only, thus forming an exploited class.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Lenin as Philosopher (1938), Chapter 8

Communication

“I know of no well-directed attempts of this kind, except in the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs, who are said to have been very successful in whitening the skins and increasing the height of their race by prudent marriages, particularly by that very judicious cross with Maud, the milk- maid, by which some capital defects in the constitutions of the family were corrected.”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter IX, paragraph 14, lines 22-27 ( see also eugenics)

Marriage, Family, Success

“Do they believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? … it was their verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. … I have maintained for years, sometimes perhaps with undue heat: that pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

On "teachers of English" in "The Schoolmarm's Goal" in The Lower Depths (1925)
1920s

Education, Beauty, Home, Thinking

“When I return-as soon I will-to those who sent me here, and shall be asked of what I had seen at Washington-and what it was that most engaged the attention of the Representatives of a great people, and what of good had been done for the country, the answer must be, so far as our action is concerned, that day by day, week after week, and month after month before the election, the chief business of all parties was the creation of political capital upon which to draw in the then coming presidential campaign; and that after the election, there seemed to be no greater object of interest than the establishment of the fact, that if not cheated in sending us here, the people were green enough to be swindled afterwards. Yes, sir; the whole of them, Democrats, Republicans, and Know-Nothings.”

John M. Sandidge (1817–1890) American politician

Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 34th Congress, 3rd Session, Page 128 (1857-01-07))

People, Business, Drawing, Cheating

“The founders of the English laws have with excellent forecast contrived, that no man should be called to answer to the king for any capital crime, unless upon the preparatory accusation of twelve or more of his fellow subjects, the grand jury: and that the truth of every accusation, whether preferred in the shape of indictment, information, or appeal, should afterwards be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbours, indifferently chosen, and superior to all suspicion. So that the liberties of England cannot but subsist, so long as this palladium remains sacred and inviolate, not only from all open attacks, (which none will be so hardy as to make) but also from all secret machinations, which may sap and undermine it; by introducing new and arbitrary methods of trial, by justices of the peace, commissioners of the revenue, and courts of conscience. And however convenient these may appear at first, (as doubtless all arbitrary powers, well executed, are the most convenient) yet let it be again remembered, that delays, and little inconveniences in the forms of justice, are the price that all free nations must pay for their liberty in more substantial matters; that these inroads upon this sacred bulwark of the nation are fundamentally opposite to the spirit of our constitution; and that, though begun in trifles, the precedent may gradually increase and spread, to the utter disuse of juries in questions of the most momentous concern.”

William Blackstone book Commentaries on the Laws of England

Book IV, ch. 27 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/blackstone_bk4ch27.asp: Of Trial, And Conviction. Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769)

Truth, Secret, Peace, Justice

“There are still films about bank robberies, but let's be honest, the biggest financial crimes today aren't happening in banks, they're happening on Wall Street. This is happening in the completely abstract datasphere. Capitalism is dependent upon this commodity of speed. Making a film about a bank robbery is maybe funny, but it's completely anachronistic. We have to tell the stories of the 21st century, specifically in a way that people can relate to it.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

via Futurezone https://futurezone.at/english/sierra-zulu-draws-attention-to-soviet-austria/24.578.924

People, Way, Dependency, Speed

“I think it is only because capitalism has proved so enormously more efficient than alternative methods that it has survived at all. (…) I'm not sure capitalism is the right word. There is a sense in which every society is capitalist. The Soviet Union was capitalist, but it was state capitalism. Latin American societies in the past have been capitalist, but it has been oligarchic capitalism. So what we really need to talk about is not capitalism but free market or competitive capitalism which is the system that we would like to have adopted, not just capitalism.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Interview with Parker in Randall E. Parker(ed.), Reflection on the Great Depression (2002)

Thinking, Sense, Past

“In a world where technology and capital are highly transferable, there is a real risk that comparative advantage comes to be defined as whose labor force will work for the lowest wage.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 3, Trade, p. 102

World

“The Christian insistence on freedom — the monastic vows are voluntary sacrifices of a select few — derives from the Christian concept that man must be free in order to act morally. (A sleeping, a chained and clubbed, a drugged person can neither be sinful nor virtuous.) Yet, the free world which is practically synonymous with the world of free enterprise alone provides a climate, a way of life compatible with the dignity of man who makes free decisions, enjoys privileges, assumes responsiblilties, and develops his talents as he sees fit. He is truly the steward of his family. He can buy, sell, save, invest, gamble, plan the future, build, retrench, acquire capital, make donations, take risks. In other words, he can be the master of his economic fate and act as a man instead of a sheep in a herd under a shepherd and his dogs. No doubt, free enterprise is a harsh system; it demands real men. But socialism, which appeals to envious people craving for security and afraid to decide for themselves, impairs human dignity and crushes man utterly.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

The Roots of Anticapitalism

Life, Men, Fate, People

“Management's objective is to achieve a return on capital over the long term which averages somewhat higher than that of American industry generally — while utilizing sound accounting and debt policies.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

29 March 1974
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

“Way back in the early 80s, when I was first kicking off writing V for Vendetta for the English magazine Warrior, the story was very much a result of me actually sitting down and thinking about what the real extreme poles of politics were. Because it struck me that simple capitalism and communism were not the two poles around which the whole of political thinking revolved. It struck me that two much more representative extremes were to be found in fascism and anarchy.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)

Way, Communication, Thinking

“Great Britain may certainly continue to uphold her envied supremacy, sustained by her coal, iron, capital, and skill, if, acting on the Baconian axiom, " Knowledge is Power," she shall diligently promote moral and professional culture among all ranks of her productive population.”

Andrew Ure (1778–1857) Scottish doctor and chemist

Source: The Philosophy of Manufactures, 1835, p. vii

Knowledge, Envy

“The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

397
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Falseness

“Everyday I become more convinced, there is no doubt in my mind, as many intellectuals have said, that it is necessary to transcend capitalism. But capitalism can not be transcended through capitalism itself; it must be done through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. I’m also convinced that it is possible to do it under democracy, but not in the type of democracy being imposed by Washington.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez during his closing speech at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. January 31, 2005. http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1486 2005

Justice, Democracy

“Capital can seldom be made productive, without undergoing several changes both of form and of place, the risk of which is always more or less alarming to persons unaccustomed to the operations of industry; whereas, on the contrary, landed property produces without any change of either quality or position.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book II, On Distribution, Chapter IX, Section I, p. 363

Change, Personality

“postmodernism contemporaneity, a morass of deferred solutions on every level, featuring ambiguity, the refusal to ponder either origins or ends, as well as the denial of oppositional approaches, "the new realism." Signifying nothing and going nowhere, pm [postmodernism] is an inverted millenarianism, a gathering fruition of the technological "life"-system of universal capital.”

John Zerzan book Future Primitive and Other Essays

The Catastrophe of Postmodenity
Future Primitive and Other Essays (1994)

Life, Universe

“That is a profound revelation of the difference between capitalist and pre-capitalist societies; and when capitalism came into contact with the still largely communal African societies, it introduced money relations at the expense of kinship ties.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 338.

Money, Communication

“An enlightened impartial observer…will be disposed to think that in the common interests of humanity this remarkable strike and the results of this strike, which have tended somewhat to strengthen the condition of labour in the face of capital, is the record of what we ought to regard as satisfactory, as a real social advance; that it tends to a greater, a more uniform, and a more firm establishment of just relations; that it tends to a fair principle of division of the fruits of industry.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Cheshire (23 September 1889) on the London dock strike, quoted in The Times (24 September 1889), p. 10.
1880s

Thinking

“In the disposition of capital cases in the United States, the median elapsed time between sentence and execution is approximately seventeen months. […] However, even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune […].”

Truman Capote book In Cold Blood

Part 4
In Cold Blood (1965)

Time

“The overall importance of capital today, as noted, is not very different from what it was in the eighteenth century. Only its form has changed: capital was once mainly land but is now industrial, financial, and real estate. We also know that the concentration of wealth remains high, although it is noticeably less extreme than it was a century ago. The poorest half of the population still owns nothing, but there is now a patrimonial middle class that owns between a middle and a third of total wealth, and the wealthiest ten percent now own only-two thirds of what there is to own rather than nine-tenths.”

Thomas Piketty book Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), p. 377; As cited in: " Thomas Piketty Capital in the twenty first century‎ Part III http://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.nl/2014/03/thomas-piketty-capital-in-twenty-first_30.html" on robertpaulwolff.blogspot.nl, 2014/03.

Change, Wealth

“Imperialism is capitalism in that stage of development in which the domination of monopolies and finance capital has established itself; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun; in which the partition of all the territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter Seven

World

“Neoliberalism, despite the claim by its adherents that it was simply an economic theory, was from its beginnings a class project articulated on behalf of the interests of capital.”

Marnie Holborow Irish academic

Source: Language and Neoliberalism (2015), p. 92

“There rise her timeless capitals of Empires daily born,
Whose plinths are laid at midnight, and whose streets are packed at morn;
And here come hired youths and maids that feign to love or sin
In tones like rusty razor-blades to tunes like smitten tin.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Naaman's Song http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/LimitsRenewals/naamansong.html, Stanza 2. Other works

Love, Youth

“A 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 Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Dreaming of War" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20011015/willis, The Nation (15 October 2001)

Life, Communication, Idea

“I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime."”

Derrick Jensen book The Culture of Make Believe

Source: The Culture of Make Believe (2003), p. 102

Life, Personality

“They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Statement of 1991, during the fall of USSR. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1991/19910604-1.html

Failure, Success

“The way we love our jobs and the way we love our country are similar to the way we love abusive partners. This, crucially, is how neoliberal white supremacist patriarchy is different from other power systems like feudalism, or early Protestant capitalism, or direct colonial rule, or theocracy. Rather than claiming that God created human hierarchy and telling people they should be happy with their lot, modern liberal democracies gaslight people into believing that they are already free.”

Laurie Penny (1986) English journalist

The Consent of the (Un)governed

Love, God, Happiness, People

“I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport.”

Jack Kemp (1935–2009) American football player, quarterback, U.S. Congressman

In a 1988 speech to the United States Congress, quoted by himself at Townhall.com http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JackKemp/2006/06/19/what_i_really_think_about_soccer

Hope, Thinking, Sport, Football

“When any good attitude or concept or system worked well, we hung onto it. We preserved representative democracy, intended for a time when only a few could get to the capital to speak for the many. Modern finance was designed in the 17th century. Literacy as a test of intelligence came in the 15th century. The idea of progress is 19th century. And yet, all of those things are part of our mental furniture today, because when the answer to a question -- a solution to a problem -- suits us, we kind of institutionalize it, so that it won't change even when we do. The business of questioning, itself, has been institutionalized like that, in the kind of place that Jodrell Bank telescope belongs to: a university.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are

Democracy, Intelligence, Idea, Question

Quotes about capitalism page 11

Quotes about capitalism
page 11