Sourced and curated.

1817

★ 1.0

Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits.

1822

★ 1.1

Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.

The Economic Consequences of the Peace · 1919

★ 1.1

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

Religious literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 1.3

To take usury is contrary to Scripture; it is contrary to Aristotle; it is contrary to nature, for it is to live without labour; it is to sell time, which belongs to God, for the advantage of wicked men; it is to rob those who use the money lent, and to whom, since they make it profitable, the profits should belong.

R.H. Tawney

1926

★ 1.7

Religious literature · Economic literature

Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are common. But it is to be tolerated as a concession to human frailty, not applauded as desirable in itself.

R.H. Tawney

1926

★ 1.7

In the first stone which he flings at the wild animals he pursues, in the first stick that he seizes to strike down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another, and thus discover the origin of capital.

Robert Torrens

1821

★ 1.8

Improvements succeeded each other so rapidly, that machines which had never been finished were abandoned in the hands of their makers, because new improvements had superseded their utility.

Charles Babbage

1832

★ 1.8

One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.

1955

★ 1.8

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals... The love of money as a possession—as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life—will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.

1930

★ 1.9

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

Friedrich Hayek

The Road to Serfdom · 1944

★ 1.9

These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland.

The Affluent Society · 1958

★ 1.9

Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself...economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

Milton Friedman

1962

★ 1.9

Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.

Paul Krugman

1994

★ 1.9

Rent is that portion of the produce of the earth, which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil.

Economic literature · Political literature

1817

★ 1.9

Naturally, the workers are perfectly free; the manufacturer does not force them to take his materials and his cards, but he says to them…"If you don't like to be frizzled in my frying-pan, you can take a walk into the fire."

Friedrich Engels

The Condition of the Working Class in England · 1845

★ 1.9

Economic literature · Political literature

No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency. When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust.

John Stuart Mill

1848

★ 1.9

The dog... Commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery, and as he is also an item of expense, and commonly serves no industrial purpose, he holds a well-assured place in men's regard as a thing of good repute.

Thorstein Veblen

1899

★ 1.9

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.

1919

★ 1.9

Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand.

1919

★ 1.9

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

1926

★ 1.9

Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy · 1942

★ 1.9

Every piece of business strategy... Must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy · 1942

★ 1.9

Treatise · Economic literature

1950

★ 1.9

Mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.

1859

★ 2.0

Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy · 1942

★ 2.0

The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 2.1

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 2.1

Society does not consist of individuals; it expresses the sum of connections and relationships in which individuals find themselves.

Grundrisse · 1883

★ 2.1

The chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 2.3

There is an invisible hand in politics that operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market. In politics, individuals who seek to promote only the public good are led by an invisible hand to promote special interests that it was no part of their intention to promote.

Milton Friedman

1983

★ 2.6

I believe that in many cases the ideal size for the unit of control and organisation lies somewhere between the individual and the modern State. I suggest, therefore, that progress lies in the growth and the recognition of semi-autonomous bodies within the State.

The End of Laissez-faire · 1926

★ 2.7

Economics limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans.

Joan Robinson

1962

★ 2.7

One of the main effects…of orthodox traditional economics was…a plan for explaining to the privileged class that their position was morally right and was necessary for the welfare of society.

Joan Robinson

1937

★ 3.5

In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved.

The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take.

1942

★ 3.5

Essay · Newspaper · Economic literature

The Economist · 1958

★ 3.5

The labour of women in the house, certainly enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society. But so are horses.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1898

★ 3.5

Marxian socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of opinion—how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men and, through them, the events of history.

The End of Laissez-faire · 1926

★ 3.5

Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved.

The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy · 1942

★ 3.5

Treatise · Economic literature

Ludwig von Mises

1949

★ 3.5

Essay · Newspaper · Economic literature

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.

The Economist · 1955

★ 3.5

Essay · Newspaper · Economic literature

The Economist · 1958

★ 3.5

Expenditure rises to meet income.

Economic literature · Philosophical literature

1960

★ 3.5

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.

Laurence J. Peter

1969

★ 3.5

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.

Thomas Robert Malthus

1798

★ 3.6

Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.

The Affluent Society · 1958

★ 3.6

History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

Milton Friedman

Capitalism and Freedom · 1962

★ 3.6

No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.

Amartya Sen

Development as Freedom · 1999

★ 3.6

There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down.

1822

★ 3.7

Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.

Thorstein Veblen

1899

★ 3.7

Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy · 1942

★ 3.7

All systems, either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 3.8

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 3.8

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 3.9

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 3.9

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 3.9

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 4.0

It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom.

In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The Affluent Society · 1958

★ 4.4

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 4.8

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.

1977

★ 5.1

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation...That incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy · 1942

★ 5.2

In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence.

Thorstein Veblen

The Theory of the Leisure Class · 1899

★ 5.3

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches; which, in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 5.5

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

Economic literature · Philosophical literature

1924

★ 6.9

Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.

The Theory of Moral Sentiments · 1759

★ 7.1

Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it... he intends only his own security... and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.

The Wealth of Nations · 1776

★ 7.2

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.2

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 8.7

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

1883

★ 9.3

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 9.6

Pamphlet · Political literature · Economic literature

The Communist Manifesto · 1848

★ 9.8

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.