Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy Quotes

“Nothing is so retentive as a nation's memory.”

“Nothing is so treacherous as the obvious.”

“In economic life competition is never completely lacking, but hardly ever is it perfect.”

“Wikipedia: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”

“Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.”

“Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1950)*rchive.org”

“Frank presentation of ominous facts was never more necessary than it is today because we seem to have developed escapism into a system of thought.”

“Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.”

“However, if Marx had not been more than a purveyor of phraseology, he would be dead by now.”

“I felt it my duty to take, and to inflict upon the reader, considerable trouble in order to lead up effectively to my paradoxical conclusion: capitalism is being killed by its achievements.”

“Love and hate have so blurred the results of such serious work as has so far been done on this question—it is not much—that even mere restatement of widely accepted views seemed justified here and there.”

“The trouble with Russia is not that she is socialist but that she is Russia.”

“The capitalist process shapes things and souls for socialism.”

“The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail.”

“Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm.”

“Want and effective demand are not the same thing. If they were, the poorest nations would be the ones to display the most vigorous demand.”

“Any existing structures and all the conditions of doing business are always in a process of change. Every situation is being upset before it has had time to work itself out. Economic progress, in a capitalist society, means turmoil.”

“Current economic theory is almost wholly a theory of the administration of a given industrial apparatus. But much more important than the manner in which capitalism administers given industrial structures is the manner in which it creates them.”

“The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.”

“Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment.”