Best society & capitalism Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“We’re living in an acquisitive capitalist society that is fundamentally anti-family and fundamentally uncomfortable with just enjoying being human. We’d rather shop than live, acquire than love and stare into a screen than hold each other.”

“In America, we debate everything except capitalism. If there's an institution in your society that's above criticism, you're giving it a free pass to indulge all of its weaknesses and darker tendencies.”

Ifs Giving America Dark Society Weakness Capitalism Criticism Institutions Debate Tendencies Indulge Criticise

Author:Richard D. Wolff

“Today we have a temporary aberration called "industrial capitalism" which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital, the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible capitalist would do that.”

World Inspirational Two Important Today Nature Natural Money Business Environment Society Economic Source Capitalism Economics Temporary Sensible Capitalist Natural World Aberration

Author:Amory Lovins

“What is called 'capitalism'is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close cooperation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society.”

States Political Social Powerful Economy Society Huge Exercise Capitalism International Tyranny Corporate Accountability Cooperation Political Systems Economic Globalization

Book:Language and Politics

Source: Language and Politics

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

Source: The Churchill Wit

“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.”

Literature Liberty Society Judging Capitalism Libertarian Socialism Guilty Operations Aspiration Libertarianism Hook Capitalism And Socialism

Book:Out of step: an unquiet life in the 20th century

Source: Out of step: an unquiet life in the 20th century

“Capitalism is not the system of the past; it is the system of the future -- if mankind is to have a future”

Ifs Past Humanity Economy Society Economic Mankind Future Capitalism Economics Future Generation Past Present Future

Book:The Virtue of Selfishness

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness

“To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.”

“When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.”

Source: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

“Although I have made a fortune in the financial markets, I now fear that the untrammeled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat.”

“The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism.”

Humans Society Development Conscience Capitalism Tragedy Democratic Conviction Tyranny Sensitive Protest Steady Ugliness Human Development

Book:ON NATIVE GROUNDS An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature

Source: ON NATIVE GROUNDS An Interpretation of Modern American Prose Literature

“Latter-day capitalism. Like it or not, it's the society we live in. Even the standard of right and wrong has been subdivided, made sophisticated. Within good, there's fashionable good and unfashionable good, and ditto for bad. Within fashionable good, there's formal and then there's casual; there's hip, there's cool, there's trendy, there's snobbish. Mix 'n' match. Like pulling on a Missoni sweater over Trussardi slacks and Pollini shoes, you can now enjoy hybrid styles of morality. It's the way of the world -- philosophy starting to look more and more like business administration.”

Philosophy Society Morality Capitalism

Book:Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

“Never mind the eighty percent of the population who fell below the poverty line. They couldn’t afford to complain and risk losing their dole.”

Money Poverty Society Capitalism Welfare Control Working Class Welfare State

Book:Dreck

Source: Dreck

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, as the saying went. Unless it’s also holding the key to your cage. That might actually be worth it.”

Money Poverty Society Capitalism Welfare Control Working Class Welfare State

Book:Dreck

Source: Dreck

“The outer is ordained for the sake of the inner; economic goods are instrumental--sicut quaedam adminicula, quibus adjuvanur ad tendendum in beatitudinum. ‘It is lawful to desire temporal blessings, not putting them in the first place, as though setting up our rest in them, but regarding them as aids the blessedness, inasmuch as they support our corporal life and serve as instruments for acts of virtue.’ Riches, as St. Antonino says, exist for man not man for riches.”

Religion Wealth Society Ethics Capitalism

Author:RH Tawney

“The definition of money as the sublime good--because it can be turned into all other goods--results in the depreciation of all values that do not pay. What is moral is what returns a profit and satisfies the judgment of the bottom line. Freedom comes to be defined, in practice if not in commencement speeches, as the freedom to exploit. This commercial reading of the text of human natures gives rise to a system that puts a premium on crime, encourages the placid acquiescence in the dishonest thought or deal, sustains the routine hypocrisy of politics and proclaims as inviolate the economic savagery otherwise known as the free market or freedom under capitalism. It is no accident that in a society that presumes a norm of violence, whether on the football field or in the conduct of its business, people speak of deals as "killings.”

Wealth Money Class Violence Society Crime Human Capitalism Capital

Author:Lewis Lapham

“Again in combination with the schools, the nation's media reflect the character of society impressed by the displays of power and opulence rather than the play of mind. The ancient Greeks admired in their art what they called the glittering play of "windswift thought." Pericles in his funeral oration boasted not of the weapons or statues collected in Athens, although these were many and beautiful, but of the character of the Athenian citizen--self-reliant, resourceful, public-spirited, loyal, skeptical, marked "by refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy.”

Wealth Society Capitalism Economics Capital Lapham Lapham Quarterly

Author:Lewis Lapham

“Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.”

Source: Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.”

“Rhetorical bombast, music and song resound, banners wave, flowers and colors serve as symbols, and the leaders seek to attach their followers to their own person. Liberalism has nothing to do with all this. It has no party flower and no party color, no party song and no party idols, no symbols and no slogans. It has the substance and the arguments. These must lead it to victory.”

“A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people.”

Source: Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us.”

Work Freedom Society Capitalism Authenticity Agency Capital

Book:Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Source: Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

“Beside him was a small employee sweeping the floor, just by Andrei. The cleaner clenched the broom with effort and quick movements. She moved forcefully, with so much vigor that one saw a girl scout. But wrinkles had already formed on her neck, that sweated, moistening her black wig. Andrei stared, noticing she was damn good at her job, but too good. She would bend her legs to sweep the difficult corners of the shop. The woman would adjust the picture frames on the wall and wipe down the chairs, tasks which were not part of her required duties. Whenever her co-workers talked casually, the woman steered the conversation to the topic of the conditions of the store, which she knew, or to certain customers, who she knew, or to how business was, which she knew. She drove back home with a smile, knowing she’d done a great job that day. “They need me! Otherwise, who else would have caught the slip hazard by the trash? No one, not even my manager!” she would say before bed. She was naturally helpful. It was tragic to see that kind employee, happy like a little child, be so great at some stupid shop, when in her pumped a heart large enough to fuel the future, a forest, or a country. There was no structure of life, or invention yet created, whose mechanism could righteously allocate the innocence and love embedded in the warm blood of a human being. There deserved to be. She was sacred. But the world, decidedly corporate, had seized her, eaten her up, devouring what was left of the lively.”

America Work Society Capitalism Labor Innocence Wages Manual Labor Nine To Five

Book:A Happy Ghost

Source: A Happy Ghost

“In the end, it's not the market or technology that decides what has real value, but society. If we want this century to be one in which all of us get richer, then we'll need to free ourselves of the dogma that all work is meaningful. And, while we're at it, let's also get rid of the fallacy that a higher salary is automatically a reflection of societal value.”

Work Money Society Capitalism Social Values

Book:Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

Source: Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

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