Quotessence
Home / Authors / George Gilder
George Gilder

George Gilder Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllWealthEconomyCapitalismEconomicsPeopleOrderTheoryCreativeEntrepreneurInformation

Famous George Gilder Quotes

“Religion is primary. Unless a culture is aspiring toward the good, the true, and the beautiful, and wants the good and the true, really worships God, it readily worships Satan. If we turn away from God, our culture becomes dominated by "Real Crime Stories" and rap music and other spew... When the culture becomes corrupt, then the businesses that serve the culture also become corrupt... Secular culture is in general corrupt, and degraded, and depraved. Because I don't believe in secular culture, I think parochial schools are the only real schools.”

GodSchoolReligionCultureSecular
Author:George Gilder
Create image

“Yet economics purports to be strangely exempt from this fact of life. From Adam Smith's day to our own, the chief concern of the discipline has been to render economic events unsurprising...The discernment of orderly rules governing the apparent chaos of life was a remarkable achievement and continues to amaze.”

Adam Smith
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“At the heart of capitalism is the unification of knowledge and power. As Friedrich Hayek, the leader of the Austrian school of economics, put it, "To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind... is to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world." Because knowledge is dispersed, power must be as well.”

WorldMindWellsHeartImportantRealSchoolGivenLeaderCapitalismEconomicsAssumingSignificantReal WorldDisregardUnificationHayekKnowledge And PowerFriedrich Hayek
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“Enforced by genetics, sexual reproduction, perspective, and experience, the most manifest characteristic of human beings is their diversity. The freer an economy is, the more this human diversity of knowledge will be manifested. By contrast, political power originates in top-down processes-governments, monopolies, regulators, and elite institutions- all attempting to quell human diversity and impose order. Thus power always seeks centralization.”

HumansGovernmentPoliticalOrderProcessHuman BeingsEconomyPerspectiveDiversityEconomicsInstitutionsCharacteristicsManifestElitesContrastMonopolyAttemptingGeneticsReproductionPolitical PowerTop DownRegulatorsCentralizationHuman Diversity
Author:George Gilder
Create image

“In an information economy, entrepreneurs master the science of information in order to overcome the laws of the purely physical sciences. They can succeed because of the surprising power of the laws of information, which are conducive to human creativity. The central concept of information theory is a measure of freedom of choice. The principle of matter, on the other hand, is not liberty but limitation- it has weight and occupies space.”

HumansMatterHandsLawOrderChoicesSpaceLibertyPrinciplesCreativityEconomyInformationMastersTheorySucceedConceptsEconomicsOvercomingWeightEntrepreneurLimitationSurprisingFreedom Of ChoicePhysical Science
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“From the equilibrium and spontaneous order of Adam Smith and his heirs, from invisible-handed markets and perfect competition, supply and demand, and rewards and punishments, I was pushed to theories of disequilibrium and disorder, and information and noise, as the keys to understanding economic progress.”

OrderUnderstandingPerfectProgressEconomicInformationTheoryKeysDemandEconomicsCompetitionRewardsPunishmentInvisibleNoiseDisorderAdamSpontaneousEquilibriumHeirsSupply And DemandReward And PunishmentEconomic ProgressDisequilibriumPerfect Competition
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“The most important feature of an information economy, in which information is defined as surprise, is the overthrow, not the attainment, of equilibrium. The science that we have come to know as information theory establishes the supremacy of the entrepreneur because it appreciates the powerful connection between destruction and what Schumpeter described as "creative destruction," between chaos and creativity.”

KnowsImportantPowerfulCreativityEconomyCreativeInformationTheoryEconomicsAppreciateConnectionsDestructionEntrepreneurSurpriseChaosDefinedFeaturesAttainmentEquilibriumSupremacyCreative Destruction
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“In order to understand the movement of prices, you need not an oscilloscope to measure the entire market and reduce it to noise, but a microscope to investigate the creative process behind every company and its price.”

NeedsOrderProcessBehindsCompanyCreativeMovementEconomicsNoiseCreative ProcessMicroscopes
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. As Henry Ford said many years earlier: "If I had listened to my customers, I would have built a faster horse." Inventions in general express Shannon entropy. They come from the supply side.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWantYearsSaidHardShowsSidesFocusGroupsDesignProductsBuiltEconomicsHorseCustomersInventionFasterWant UEntropyFocus GroupsShannon
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“Entropy is Janus-faced. Its upside surprises are redemptive and favorable to freedom. It is freedom of choice. But the carrier itself requires constant vigilance against entropic noise. Order is not spontaneous, but it is a necessary condition for all the surprises of freedom and opportunity.”

OrderChoicesOpportunityConditionsEconomicsConstantSurpriseNoiseSpontaneousFreedom Of ChoiceVigilanceEntropyCarrierJanus
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“Entrepreneurial creation is the generation, de novo, of novelty and surprise- freedom of choice originating in the world of ideas, and imagination beyond all concern with chemicals. The contrary view- that all ideas are determined by material relationships- is the materialist superstition.”

WorldIdeasChoicesImaginationViewsGenerationsCreationMaterialsConcernEconomicsSurpriseDeterminedContraryChemicalsSuperstitionsNoveltyEntrepreneurialFreedom Of Choice
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“The fundamental fact in the lives of the poor in most parts of America is that the wages of common labor are far below the benefits of AFDC, Medicaid, food stamps, public housing, public defenders, leisure time and all the other goods and services of the welfare state.”

StatesFactsAmericaPoorCommonBenefitsLaborFundamentalsWelfareGoodsLeisureWagesStampsHousingDefendersWelfare StateGoods And ServicesLeisure TimeFood StampsMedicaidPublic Housing
Author:George Gilder
Create image

“Like the Pentagon, our social science often reduces all phenomena to dollars and body counts. Sexuality, family unity, kinship, masculine solidarity, maternity, motivation, nurturing, all the rituals of personal identity and development, all the bonds of community, seem "sexist," "superstitious," "mystical," "inefficient," "discriminatory." And, of course, they are -- and they are also indispensable to a civilized society.”

BodySeemsMotivationCoursesSocialCommunityIdentityDevelopmentDollarsUnitySexualityCivilizedRitualSolidarityMysticalIndispensableMasculineNurturingSuperstitiousSexistKinshipPentagonSocial ScienceCivilized SocietyMaternityPersonal Identity
Book:Sexual suicide
Create image

“In the history of enterprise, most of the protagonists of major new products and companies began their education - not in the classroom, where the old ways are taught, but in the factories and labs where new ways are wrought ... nothing has been so rare in recent years as an Ivy League graduate who has made a significant innovation in American enterprise.”

WayYearsHas BeensMadeCompanyTaughtProductsMajorsCapitalismInnovationSignificantLeagueEnterpriseGraduatesFactoriesClassroomNew WaysLabsIvyProtagonistsOld WaysNew ProductsIvy League
Author:George Gilder
Create image

“But if the 1 percent and the 0.1 percent are respected and allowed to risk their wealth - and new rebels are allowed to rise up and challenge them - America will continue to be the land where the last regularly become the first by serving others.”

IfsFirstsLastsAmericaPoliticalPoliticsChallengesWealthRiskLandPercentServingRebelServing Others
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“The information glut has become a ruling cliche. As all resources - from energy to information - become more abundant, the presure of economic scarcity falls ever more heavily on one key residual, and that single shortage looms ever more stringent and controlling. The governing scarcity of the information economy is time: the shards of a second, the hours in a day, the years in a life, the latency of memory, the delay in aluminum wires, the time to market, the time to metastasis, the time to retirement.”

YearsFallEnergyHoursMemoriesEconomyEconomicInformationKeysResourcesRetirementDelayRulingWireClicheGoverningShortageScarcityAluminumResidual
Author:George Gilder
Create image

“Capitalism offers nothing but frustrations and rebuffs to those who wish - because of claimed superiority of intelligence, birth, credentials, or ideals - to get without giving, to take without risking, to profit without sacrifice, to be exalted without humbling themselves to understand others and meet their needs.”

NeedsGivingWishSacrificeBirthOffersCapitalismIdealsProfitFrustrationSuperiorityExaltedHumblingCredentialsWithout SacrificeRebuff
Book:The Spirit of Enterprise
Create image

“[Successful] projects that entrepreneurs initiated and carried through had one essential quality. All had been thoroughly contemplated by the regnant experts and dominant companies, with their large research staffs and financial resources, and had been judged too difficult, untimely, risky, expensive and unprofitable.”

DifficultQualityCompanySuccessfulEssentialsProjectsResearchResourcesEntrepreneurFinancialExpertsExpensiveJudgedDominantFinancial Resources
Author:George Gilder
Create image

“The rates of taxation climb and the levels of capital decline, until the only remaining wealth beyond the reach of the regime is the very protein of human flesh, and that too is finally taxed, bound, and gagged, and brought to the colossal temple of the state - a final sacrifice of carnal revenue to feed the declining elite.”

HumansStatesWealthLevelsSacrificeFinalsRateBoundsFleshClimbsTemplesRegimesElitesDeclineTaxationRevenueProteinColossal
Book:Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century
Create image

“Welfare now erodes work and family and thus keeps poor people poor. Accompanying welfare is an ideology - sustaining a whole system of federal and state bureaucracies - that also operates to destroy their faith. The ideology takes the form of false theories of discrimination and spurious claims of racism and sexism as the dominant forces in the lives of the poor.”

PeopleStatesWholeFormForcePoorTheoryRacismClaimsDiscriminationIdeologyWelfareSexismDominantBureaucracyPoor PeopleSustainingErode
Book:Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century
Create image

“When capitalists are thwarted, deflected, or dispossessed, the generals and politicians,... and socialist intellectuals, are always amazed at how quickly the great physical means of production - the contested tokens of wealth and resources of nature - dissolve into so much scrap, ruined concrete, snarled wire, and wilderness.”

MeanWealthPoliticianResourcesProductionsWildernessCapitalistConcreteSocialistAmazedRuinedWireScrapTokens
Book:The Spirit of Enterprise
Create image

“Socialism is an insurance policy bought by all the members of a national economy to shield them from risk. But the result is to shield them from knowledge of the real dangers and opportunities.”

RealOpportunityResultsEconomyRiskDangerPolicyMembersSocialismShieldsInsurance PolicyNational Economy
Book:Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How it is Revolutionizing our World
Create image

“Most of America's leading entrepreneurs are bound to the masts of their fortunes. They are allowed to keep their wealth only as long as they invest it in others. In a real sense, they can keep only what they give away. It has been given to others in the form of investments. It is embodied in a vast web of enterprises that retains its worth only through constant work and sacrifice. Capitalism is a system that begins not with taking but with giving to others.”

GivingLongHas BeensRealAmericaFormGivenWealthSacrificeCapitalismConstantEntrepreneurFortuneInvestmentBoundsEnterpriseGiving To OthersMasts
Author:George Gilder
Create image

“Most people consider themselves above the gritty and relentless details of life that allow the creation of great wealth. They leave it to the experts. But in general you join the one percent of the one percent not by leaving it to the experts but by creating new expertise, not by knowing what the experts know but by learning what they think is beneath them.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWealthKnowingCreationCreatingPercentLeavingDetailsExpertsRelentlessExpertiseDetails Of Life
Book:Wealth and Poverty: A New Edition for the Twenty-First Century
Create image

“The United States is probably the most [socially] mobile society in the history of the world. The virtues that are most valuable in it are diligence, discipline, ambition, and a willingness to take risks. Education and credentials are most important in government; elsewhere most skills are learned on the job.”

WorldImportantStatesGovernmentJobsUnitedUnited StatesVirtueRiskDisciplineSkillsAmbitionValuableWillingnessElsewhereWorld HistoryMobileDiligenceCredentials
Author:George Gilder
Create image