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Quotes about economics

133 quotes from 78 people

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Men did not make the earth… It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property… Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
Thomas Paine1737–1809Agrarian Justice (1797), Agrarian Justice
We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1982
Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini’s success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say “But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.”
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Time (17 May 1976)
- Government
Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.
Daniel Webster1782–1852Speech (2 April 1824); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), volume iii, page 141
- Work
He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet.
Daniel Webster1782–1852Speech on Hamilton (10 March 1831)
It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism.
Malcolm X1925–1965May 29, 1964
- Race
Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the moral, nor the ethics, nor the will to solve the problems of poverty.
Fidel Castro1926–2016Speech (26 July 1991)
Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Speech at the People’s Forum in Troy, New York (March 3, 1912)
- Business
There really is no alternative.
Margaret Thatcher1925–2013Press Conference for American correspondents in London (25 June 1980), defending monetarist policy.
- Politics
Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.
Mikhail Bakunin1814–1876“The Red Association” (1870)
- Freedom
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part II, 775.In context
- Government
In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 80.In context
- Work
The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.
Milton Friedman1912–2006Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
Edward Abbey1927–1989“The Second Rape of the West”, p. 183
- Nature
A religion may be discerned in capitalism⁠—that is to say, capitalism serves essentially to allay the same anxieties, torments, and disturbances to which the so-called religions offered answers.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940Translated by Rodney Livingstone in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1 (Harvard: 1996)
- Religion