Best economic & self Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism...scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity.”

“Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?”

Self Political Interest Economic Capitalism Self Interest Really True

Author:Milton Friedman

“The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.”

May Self Interest Economic Expression Type Capitalism Mere Greed Range Petty Self Interest Admirable Self Expression Economic Systems

Author:Felix Frankfurter

“The economy has settled into a sustainable, self-reinforcing growth path, .. All major categories of the economy have contributed to economic growth. Now that businesses have begun to add to payrolls, the current expansion is self-reinforcing. Only external shocks, such as terrorist attacks or a surge in oil prices, could derail the recovery.”

Self Growth Economy Path Economic Majors Add Currents Oil Terrorist Recovery Shock Categories Expansion Economic Growth Terrorist Attacks Payroll Oil Price

Author:Sung Won Sohn

“Today's reports confirm that, unfortunately, post-crisis America is still not back to its good economic self.”

Stills Self Today America Economic Crisis Posts Reports

Author:Mohamed El-Erian

“It's important that we recognize how extreme the Republicans are in almost every case and how against our self-interest it is to vote for them whether or not we are disappointed with the current crew. At least they believe in the Constitution. At least they have an idea of economic justice. The Republicans are devoted to creating more rich folks.”

Believe Important Ideas Self Interest Justice Cases Rich Economic Republican Creating Vote Constitution Folks Currents Extremes Disappointed Devoted Crew Self Interest Economic Justice

Author:Gloria Steinem

“This was 1990, the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.”

Knows Years Kind Ends Self Seems Fall Interest Written Sadness Economic Strange Europe Died Greed Noble Experiments Communism Iron Curtains Self Interest Economic Systems Iron Curtain

Author:Bill Bryson

“In the background lurks the scourge of international terrorism. There are people exercising power in a few countries and leading political factions in others who seem to be moved by narrow, brutal and irrational impulses. Their view of their own self-interest is so blinkered as to leave no space for purely human values, for peaceful negotiation or for economic advancement. They are bent on the destruction of the established order and of civilised ways of doing business. They must never be allowed to succeed.”

“[Conservatism:] Our revolutionary message... is that a self-disciplined people can create a political community in which an ordered liberty will promote both economic prosperity and political participation.”

People Self Political Community Liberty Economic Messages Prosperity Revolutionary Participation Conservatism Economic Prosperity Political Participation

Author:Irving Kristol

“The raw fact is that every successful example of economic development this past century every case of a poor nation that worked its way up to a more or less decent, or at least dramatically better, standard of living has taken place via globalization, that is, by producing for the world market rather than trying for self-sufficiency.”

“No left wing parties have any respect for liberal economic values; and most centre and right wing parties merely promote a paternalistic stateism. Does it thus fall to the self-reliant students of the ruggedly individualist philosophy of magick to champion a certain measured libertarianism?”

Doe Self Philosophy Certain Values Fall Left Party Economic Students Wings Champion Libertarianism Centre Right Wing Left Wing Self Reliant Economic Value

Author:Peter J. Carroll

“Utilitarianism had found [in Samuel Smiles' Self-Help] its portrait gallery of heroes, inscribed with a vigorous exhortation to all men to strive in their image; this philistine romanticism established the bourgeois hero-prototype the penniless office-boy who works his way to economic fortune and this wins his way into the mercantile plutocracy.”

Men Way Self Helping Found Winning Boys Economic Self Help Hero Office Fortune Strive Portraits Gallery Bourgeois Vigorous Romanticism Prototype Philistines Utilitarianism Plutocracy

Author:John Carroll

“Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analysis are the economic and social causes of the conflict.”

Self Lost Social Causes Economic Conflict Analysis Serving Self Serving

Author:Michel Chossudovsky

“A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated.”

“Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent.”

“America has a history of political isolation and economic self-sufficiency; its citizens have tended to regard the rest of the world as a disaster area from which lucky or pushy people emigrate to the Promised Land.”

People World Self America Political United States Economic Land Citizens Lucky Areas Regard Disaster Arrogance Isolation Self Sufficiency Sufficiency Promised Land Pushy

Author:Alison Lurie

“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,--if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”

“A serf-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.”

Children Self Reason Hours Existence Democracy Economic Labor Workers Justification Wages Stretching Child Labor Serfs

Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt

“In view of the importance of philanthropy in our society, it is surprising that so little attention has been given to it by economic or social theorists. In economic theory, especially, the subject is almost completely ignored. This is not, I think, because economists regard mankind as basically selfish or even because economic man is supposed to act only in his self-interest; it is rather because economics has essentially grown up around the phenomenon of exchange and its theoretical structure rests heavily on this process.”

“The philanthropic tradition is older than democracy, older than Christianity, and older than higher education. It gives form and purpose to personal and social life that cannot be provided by the self-interest of economic enterprise or required by the mandate of political institutions.”

“The myth of self-sufficiency blinds us to the workings of other forces in family life. For families are not now, nor were they ever, the self-sufficient building blocks of society, exclusively responsible, praiseworthy, and blamable for their own destiny. They are deeply influenced by broad social and economic forces over which they have little control.”

Source: All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure

“It is also in despair of being able to understand or make any productive contribution to the highly organised chaos of our politico-economic system that large numbers of people simply abandon political and social committments. They just let society be taken over by a pattern of organisation which is as self-proliferative as a weed, and whose ends and values are neither human nor instinctive but mechanical.”

People Humans Ends Self Able Political Values Social Numbers Taken Economic Despair Chaos Patterns Contribution Productive Abandon Weed Organisation Large Numbers Economic Systems Organised

Author:Alan Watts

“If the self-discipline of the free cannot match the iron discipline of the mailed fist, in economic, political, scientific, and all the other kinds of struggles, as well as the military, then the peril to freedom will continue to rise.”

Ifs Wells Kind Self Political Struggle Economic Military Discipline Iron Self Discipline Fists Peril

Book:Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961

“The notion that economic life is a distinct realm, governed by immutable laws of narrow self-interest, is giving way to a much older notion: economic life is only one strand in the rich web of human relationships.”

Way Giving Humans Self Law Life Is Interest Rich Economic Notion Realms Self Interest Human Relations Human Relationships Strands Giving Way

Author:Frances Moore Lappé

“The established order has too many self-protecting economic entities, and not enough people who yet understand what it takes to change.”

People Self Enough Order Economic Entity

Author:William J. Clinton

“Capitalism in the 19th century did not doom the worker to a life of perpetual poverty. Instead, they kept creating new and better-paying employments as the decades went by. They produced the wealth and rising income that resulted in the emergence of a phenomenon completely new to human history: a self-supporting and educated middle class that grew more and more as they lower classes bettered their economic well-being.”

“All the forms of double taxation in the current system are punitive and self-destructive because they are literally destroying people's incentive to provide that seed corn for future economic growth.”

People Self Form Growth Economic Currents Seeds Destructive Destroying Taxation Incentives Corn Economic Growth Self Destructive

Author:Daniel J. Mitchell

“Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet.”

Long Self Social Term Economic Planets Materials Innovation Evolve Long Term Doomed Scorn Wipe Experimentation Variables Raw Materials

Book:Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Source: Thinking in Systems: A Primer

“How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious... If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.”

People Ifs World Giving Children Self Interest Compassion Economic Serious Our Children Billions Enlightened Nightmare Integration Self Interest Poorest Credible Divergence

Author:Paul Collier

“In many inner cities, there are issues of less economic stability, poorer education, community centers being stripped away, arts being removed from the school system leaving many children imbalanced, isolated from their most powerful self... the independent thinker, the creator, the dreamer often leaving children more susceptible to other harmful things out of boredom or feelings of rejection.”

“Much of the criticism of economic globalization has centered on factory labor abuses. But the majority of the world's poor are not employed in factories; they are self-employed - as peasant farmers, rural peddlers, urban hawkers, and small producers, usually involved in agriculture and small trade in the world's vast "informal" economy .”

Source: How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition

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Economic Quotes