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Quotes about economics

133 quotes from 78 people

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It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
- Charity
Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.
Rutherford B. Hayes1822–1893Diary (16 February 1890)
- Money
I must confess that if I had been consulted whether to establish a Nobel Prize in economics, I should have decidedly advised against it.
Friedrich Hayek1899–1992Nobel Banquet Speech (1974)
I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to William Plumer (21 July 1816)
- Government
If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.
Milton Friedman1912–2006America’s Drug Forum interview (1991)
- Government
Socialism is the theory that the desire of one man to get something he hasn’t got is more pleasing to a just God than the desire of some other man to keep what he has got.
H. L. Mencken1880–1956A Little Book in C Major, New York, NY, John Lane Company (1916) p. 51
- Politics
The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Chapter 24
When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism⁠—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
Ayn Rand1905–1982The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
- Government
The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.
Rutherford B. Hayes1822–1893Diary (12 December 1890)
- Money
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Second Inaugural Address (1937)
- Money
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil.
Albert Einstein1879–1955Why Socialism? (1949)
By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, Chapter II, p. 488-489.In context
Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes.
George Orwell1903–1950The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
- Politics
Our society is run by a managerial bureaucracy, by professional politicians; people are motivated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and consuming more, as purposes in themselves.
Erich Fromm1900–1980The Art of Loving (1956)
- Politics
The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.
Friedrich Hayek1899–1992The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), Ch. 5: The Fatal Conceit.
- Knowledge