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 CAPITALISM . . [QUOTES FOLLOW LINKS] see: ADVERTISING BIG BUSINESS BURMA SHAVE BUSINESS COMMERCE COMMUNISM COMPETITION CONSUMERS CORPORATIONS CUSTOMERS DEMOCRACY DEPRESSION (THE GREAT) ECONOMICS, ECONOMY (THE) EMPLOYMENT FREE TRADE GLOBALIZATION INDUSTRIALISATION LABOR UNIONS MONEY SLOGANS SOCIALISM STOCK MARKET TELEVISION ADS UNIONS WORK --- ... the myth of socialism is far stronger than the reality of capitalism. That is because capitalism is not really an ism at all. It is what people do if you leave them alone. --attributed to Arnold Beichman (1913—2010) American journalist and author. Capitalism, it is said, is a system wherein man exploits man. And communism — is vice versa. --Daniel Bell (1919—2011) American journalist and sociologist. Quoting 'a Polish intellectual' in _The End of Ideology_ [1960]. I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. --William F. Buckley Jr. (1925—2008) American author and journalist. "God and Man at Yale" [1951] Captains of Industry. --Thomas Carlyle (1795—1881) Scottish historian and political philosopher. In _Past and Present_, title of bk. 4, ch. 4 [1843] Capitalism is about turning luxuries into necessities. --attributed to Andrew Carnegie (1835—1919) American businessman and philanthropist of Scottish birth. - The inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent vice of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. --Winston Churchill (1874—1965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955]. House of Commons speech [22 October 1945]. The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman's speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss. --Winston Churchill (1874—1965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955]. Attributed in James C. Humes _Speaker's Treasury of Anecdotes About the Famous_ [1978]. Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is — the strong horse that pulls the whole cart. --attributed to Winston Churchill (1874—1965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955]. - - [John D(avison) Rockefeller] was only thirty-three when he owned ninety percent of all American refineries and all the main pipelines and oil cars of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Within a few years he was the first billionaire in history. He lived most of his life more simply than most stock- brokers, like a frugal Scandinavian monarch. By his bedside in his New York house he had always on hand his Bible, though it lay on top of his bedside safe. At sixty, penitence set in. He was very much a Victorian in his capacity to rationalize his energy as the engine of God. And, as happened with many more of the money barons, the coming on of arthritis convinced him that he had made all his money for the public good. So, with complete sincerity, he disbursed it. Through a foundation created in his own name, he gave $530,000,000 for worldwide medical research. I must say that he is the only philanthropist I can think of who gave away his fortune with no strings binding its use. He was photographed everywhere doing folksy things — attending a county fair, teetering on the putting green, marrying off a couple of midgets for charity — to prove that even Rockefeller was as mortal as the rest of us and that, though he was a kind of monarch, he had the common touch. As he moved into his nineties people began to doubt his mortality, but the news that he was restricted to a gruel and Graham cracker diet brought some consolation to the poor and healthy. When he died, at the age of ninety-eight, it was as if an emperor had gone. [ . . . ] There were not many men like Rockefeller, but it didn't take many to constitute a cabal of real national, continental power that overshadowed the elected power of the Presidents of the United States. There was Henry Clay Frick, who turned coke and iron ore into gold, and E. H. Harriman, who collected railroads the way other men collect stamps. There were Harriman's rival, James J. Hill, and his ally, John Pierpont Morgan, Sr., whose specialty was money itself. And there was Frick's sometime friend and sometime enemy, Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had three specialties: steel, making money, and giving it away. The son of a poor weaver, he was born in a stone cottage in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1835, at a time of such depression that in the revolutionary year of 1848 the family took off for America and for a squalid house in a grimy town called Pittsburgh. The father went back to weaving and the mother went back to stitching shoe leather; it was not much of a New World for them. But their twelve-year-old boy was as shiny as an apple and as lively as a squirrel, and he went hopping up the golden ladder rung by rung: from bobbin boy to telegraph messenger to railroad clerk, to superintendent to director. Until iron entered his career, if not his soul, and finally steel. At the turn of the twentieth century he wrote an article that ended with the heroic phrase: "Farewell, then, Age of Iron; all hail, King Steel!" He was really proclaiming his own coronation, because he foresaw before anybody the infinite possibilities of steel, for bridge building and steamships, for elevators and knives and forks. Make steel, and make it cheap, and you could own the industrial empire of the new century. Before he was thirty, he had bought a large tract on Oil Creek but soon turned from oil to building, and buying up, iron and steel mills and their tributary coal and iron fields, and then the railroads that brought their products to the Great Lakes docks, and a steamship line that took them on to Europe. His monopoly of steel helped him to weather the depression of 1892, and nine years later he graciously permitted the United States Steel Corporation — formed for the purpose — to buy him out for $250,000,000. And then he abdicated, or retired, to a castle in the eastern highlands of Scotland. He was sixty-five and he had eighteen years yet to live. And he now began the career of lavish philanthropy that made his name known around the world. Carnegie exemplifies to me a truth about American money men that many earnest people fail to grasp — which is that the chase and the kill are as much fun as the prize, which you then proceed to give away. --Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (1908—2004) British-born American broadcater and journalist. _America_ [1973] - After all, the chief business of the American people is business. --Calvin Coolidge (1872—1933) American Republican statesman and President [1923—1929]. Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors [17 January 1925]. As long as a relatively few men own the railroads, the telegraph, the telephone, own the oil fields and the gas fields and the steel mills and the sugar refineries and the leather tanneries -- own, in short, the sources and means of life-- they will corrupt our politics, they will enslave the working class, they will impoverish and debase society, they will do all things that are needful to perpetuate their power as the economic masters and the political rulers of the people. --Eugene V. Debs (1855—1926) American socialist leader. Speech [23 May 1908]. We shall not make Britain's mistake. Too wise to try to govern the world, we shall merely own it. --Ludwell Denny (1894—1970) American journalist and writer. _America Conquers Britain_ [1930] Here's the rule for bargains: 'Do other men for they would do you,' That's the true business precept. --Charles Dickens (1812—1870) English novelist. _Martin Chuzzlewit_, ch. 11 [1844] When shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and that without it, all rights would soon disappear. Their demagoguery, unless combated by truth, can become as great a danger to freedom as exists in any other threat. --Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890—1969), American Army General, supreme Allied commander WWII, NATO commander, American President [1953—1961]. Inaugural Address, Columbia University [12 October 1948] - Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. --Milton Friedman (1912—2006) American laissez-faire economist; winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics. _Capitalism and Freedom_, w/ Rose Friedman, ch. I [1962] History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. --Milton Friedman (1912—2006) American laissez-faire economist; winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics. _Capitalism and Freedom_, w/ Rose Friedman, ch. I [1962] What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system. --Milton Friedman (1912—2006) American laissez-faire economist; winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics. Attributed in Connie Robertson _The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations_ [3rd ed., 1998]. Note: Part of this quotation, as well as the general tone, is contained in Friedman's _Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist's Protest_ [1983]. - No two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other. --Thomas Friedman (b. 1953) American journalist. In _N.Y. Times_ [8 December 1996]. Over the centuries those who have been blessed with wealth have developed many remarkably ingenious and persuasive justifications of their good fortune. The instinct of the liberal is to look at these explanations with a rather unyielding eye. Yet in this case the facts are inescapable. It is the increase in output in recent years, not the redistribution of income, which has brought the greatest material increase, the well-being of the average man. And, however suspiciously, the liberal has come to accept the fact. --John Kenneth Galbraith (1908—2006) American economist. _The Affluent Society_, pp. 96-97 [1958] The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit. --Samuel Gompers (1850—1924) American labor union leader. Attributed in _Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record_, vol. 78 [1946]. - [A bank executive talks to his subordinates in a staff meeting:] Levy transition fees. And maintenance fees. And fees for opening an account, closing an account, having less than three accounts, and having more than two accounts. I want to see late charges, early charges, and surcharges on other charges. I want a fee for foreign accounts, a fee for domestic accounts, and a fee for accounts subject to audits. You get the picture? Institute a contact fee, a telephone charge, a bookkeeping adjustment charge, a sinking fee, a flotation fee, and you, Nichols, go to the New York Public Library and — I don't care how long it takes — find five fees that no one has ever heard of. Look especially hard into Babylonia, the Sumerians, Byzantium, and the Holy Roman Empire. Those guys knew what they were doing, and they had balls. --Mark Helprin (b. 1947) American novelist and journalist. _Memoir From Antproof Case_ [1995] - I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature. --Sidney Hook (1902—1989) American educator and social philosopher. _Out of Step_ [1985] In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy. --Ivan Illich (1926—2002) Austrian philosopher. _Tools for Conviviality_, ch. 3 [1973] The engine which drives Enterprise is not Thrift, but Profit. --John Maynard Keynes (1883—1946) English economist. _The Treatise on Money_ [1930] Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you. --Nikita Khrushchev (1894—1971) Soviet statesman, Premier [1958—1964]. Speech to Western diplomats in Moscow [18 November 1956]. On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had. --Sinclair Lewis (1885—1951) American novelist and playwright. _It Can't Happen Here_ [1935] These capitalists generally, act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people. --Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865) American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865]. Speech before the Illinois legislature [January 1837], as quoted in Ida M Tarbell _The Life of Abraham Lincoln: Drawn from Original Sources_, vol. 4 [1900]. Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society. --Karl Marx (1818—1883) German political philosopher. _Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production_ [1873] What a country wants to make it richer is never consumption, but production. Where there is the latter, we may be sure that there is no want of the former. To produce, implies that the producer desires to consume; why else should he give himself useless labor? He may not wish to consume what he himself produces, but his motive for producing and selling is the desire to buy. Therefore, if the producers generally produce and sell more and more, they certainly also buy more and more. --John Stuart Mill (1806—1873) English philosopher and social reformer. "The Consumer Theory of Prosperity" [1830] Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and thus increase the gap between them. --Jawaharlal Nehru (1889—1964) Indian statesman. "Basic Approach" in Vincent Shean _Nehru_ [1960]. Money is life's report card. --cartoon caption in _New Yorker_ [1979]. - Any rich man does more for society than all the jerks pasting VISUALIZE WORLD PEACE bumper stickers on their cars. The worst leech of a merger and acquisitions lawyer making $500,000 year will, even he cheats on his taxes, put $100,000 into the public coffers. That's $100,000 of education, charity or U.S. Marines. And the Marine Corps does more for world peace than all the Ben and Jerry's ice cream ever made. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Give War A Chance_ [1992] "Introduction" Omnipresent amid all the frenzy of Shanghai is that famous portrait, that modern icon. The faintly smiling, bland, yet somehow threatening visage appears in brilliant red hues on placards and posters, and is painted huge on the sides of buildings. Some call him a genius. Others blame him for the deaths of millions. There are those who say his military reputation is inflated, yet he conquered the mainland in short order. Yes, it's Colonel Sanders. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Eat the Rich_, ch. 10 [1998] - - It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. --Ayn Rand (1905—1982) Russian-born American writer. _The Fountainhead_ [1943] Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution — or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary. Yet we are taught to admire the second- hander who dispenses gifts he has not produced above the man who made the gifts possible. --Ayn Rand (1905—1982) Russian-born American writer. _The Fountainhead_ [1943] pt. 4, "Howard Roark" Ch. XVIII The 'common good' of a collective — a race, a class, a state — was the claim and justification of every tyranny ever established over men. Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equaled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism? Does the fault lie in men's hypocrisy or in the nature of the principle? The most dreadful butchers were the most sincere. They believed in the perfect society reached through the guillotine and the firing squad. Nobody questioned their right to murder since they were murdering for an altruistic purpose. It was accepted that man must be sacrificed for other men. Actors change, but the course of the tragedy remains the same. A humanitarian who starts with declarations of love for mankind and ends with a sea of blood. It goes on and will go on so long as men believe that an action is good if it is unselfish. That permits the altruist to act and forces his victims to bear it. The leaders of collectivist movements ask nothing for themselves. But observe the results. --Ayn Rand (1905—1982) Russian-born American writer. _The Fountainhead_ [1943] The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide — as, I think, he will. Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips, and guns — or dollars. Take your choice — there is no other — and your time is running out. --Ayn Rand (1905—1982) Russian-born American writer. _Atlas Shrugged_ [1957], ch. 2 "The Aristocracy of Pull" America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance — and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way. --Ayn Rand (1905—1982) Russian-born American writer. _Capitalism: The Unknown Deal_ [1966] When 'the common good' of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals. --Ayn Rand (1905—1982) Russian-born American writer. "What is Capitalism?" _Capitalism: The Unknown Deal_ [1966] - A holding company is a thing where you hand an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you. --Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (1879—1935) American humorist and actor. Quoted in P. J. O'Brien _Will Rogers: Ambassador of Good Will, Prince of Wit and Wisdom_ [1935]. In our industrial and social system the interests of all men are so closely intertwined that in the immense majority of cases a straight-dealing man who by his efficiency, by his ingenuity and industry, benefits himself must also benefit others. Normally the man of great productive capacity who becomes rich by guiding the labor of other men does so by enabling them to produce more than they could produce without his guidance; and both he and they share in the benefit, which comes also to the public at large. The superficial fact that the sharing may be unequal must never blind us to the underlying fact that there is this sharing, and that the benefit comes in some degree to each man involved. --Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919) American Republican statesman and President [1901—1909]. Fifth Message to Congress [5 December 1905], quoted in Edmund Morris, _Theodore Rex_ [2001]. Entrepreneurial profit . . . is the expression of the value of what the entrepreneur contributes to production in exactly the same sense that wages are the value expression of what the worker 'produces.' It is not a profit of exploitation any more than are wages. --Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883—1950) Morovian-born American economist and sociologist. _The Theory of Economic Development_, p. 153 [1934] Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people. --David Sarnoff (1891—1971) Russian-born American pioneer in the development of both radio and television broadcasting. Quoted in "Esquire" [1964]. You have a choice between the natural stability of gold and the honesty and intelligence of the members of government. And with all due respect for those gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, vote for gold. --attributed to George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950) Irish dramatist and critic. Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race. --William Howard Taft (1857—1930) 27th President of the United States [1909—1913] and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court [1921—1930]. _Popular Government_, ch. 3 [1913] The public be damned! I'm working for my stockholders. --attributed to William H. Vanderbilt (1821—1885) American railway magnate. - Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won. "Reflections: The Triumph of Capitalism" in _New Yorker_ [23 January 1989]. - ... a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. --anon. Quoted by Alpheus Cary in a speech at Faneuil Hall, Boston, Mass. [7 Oct. 1824]. ----- bourgeois (adj.) 1. Associated with affluent middle-class people, who are often characterized as conventional, conservative, or materialistic in outlook 2. According to Marxist theory, relating to the social class that owns the means of producing wealth and is regarded as exploiting the working class laissez-faire [les-ey FAIR], adjective: The principle that business, industry, trade, etc. should operate with a minimum of regulation and interference by government. end page | CALAMITIES - CALM | CALUMNY - CANADA | CANCER - CAPITAL PUNISHMENT | CAPITALISM | CAREFREE - CARPE DIEM | CARTER (JIMMY) - CATS & DOGS | CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - CENSORSHIP | CERTAINTY - CHANGE | CHANGING (ONE'S MIND) & CHANGING TIMES | CHARACTER | CHARACTER ASSASINATION - CHEERFULNESS | CHEER UP! - CHILDHOOD | CHILDREN | CHILDREN'S RHYME | CHINA | CHOCOLATE - CHRISTIANITY | CHRISTMAS | CHURCH - CIGARS | CIRCUMSTANCES & CITIES | CIVILITY - CIVIL RIGHTS | CLARITY - CLEVER | CLOTHES - COFFEE | COLD - COLORS | COMEDY | COMFORT - COMMON SENSE | COMMUNICATION | COMMUNISM | COMPANIONSHIP - COMPASSION | COMPETITION - COMPLIMENTS | COMPOSERS - CONDUCTORS | CONFESSION - CONQUEST | CONSCIENCE - CONTENTED | CONTEXT - CONVERSATION | CONVICTION & COOKING | COOLIDGE - CORPORATIONS | CORRUPTION - COURAGE | COURT - COWS | CREATIVITY - CRIME | CRIME & PUNISHMENT - CROOKS | CRITICISM & CRITICS | CROWD (THE) - CUBA | CULTURE - CYNICS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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