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Adam Smith11 quotes
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. — Adam Smith · 1776Every 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. — Adam Smith · 1776Man 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. — Adam Smith · 1759With 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. — Adam Smith · 1776Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. — Adam Smith · 1776There is no art which one government sooner learns of another, than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. — Adam Smith · 1776All 11 quotes →Karl Marx11 quotes
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. — Karl Marx · 1848The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. — Karl Marx · 1848From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs! — Karl Marx · 1883The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. — Karl Marx · 1848A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. — Karl Marx · 1848In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end. — Karl Marx · 1848All 11 quotes →John Maynard Keynes8 quotes
But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. — John Maynard Keynes · 1924Marxian 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. — John Maynard Keynes · 1926I 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. — John Maynard Keynes · 1926The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind. — John Maynard Keynes · 1919Perhaps it is historically true that no order of society ever perishes save by its own hand. — John Maynard Keynes · 1919A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. — John Maynard Keynes · 1926All 8 quotes →Joseph Schumpeter8 quotes
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. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942Marxism 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. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942In 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. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942Marxism is essentially a product of the bourgeois mind. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942All 8 quotes →John Kenneth Galbraith5 quotes
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. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1977It 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. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958These 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. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958One 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. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1955C. Northcote Parkinson4 quotes
Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married. — C. Northcote Parkinson · 1958Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. — C. Northcote Parkinson · 1955Expenditure rises to meet income. — C. Northcote Parkinson · 1960The man who is denied the opportunity of taking decisions of importance begins to regard as important the decisions he is allowed to take. — C. Northcote Parkinson · 1958David Ricardo4 quotes
There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down. — David Ricardo · 1822Rent 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. — David Ricardo · 1817Nothing contributes so much to the prosperity and happiness of a country as high profits. — David Ricardo · 1822Labour, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labor is that price which is necessary to enable the laborers, one with another, to subsist and perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution. — David Ricardo · 1817Milton Friedman3 quotes
History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. — Milton Friedman · 1962There 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 · 1983Freedom 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 · 1962Thorstein Veblen3 quotes
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 · 1899Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. — Thorstein Veblen · 1899The 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 · 1899Joan Robinson2 quotes
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 · 1937Economics limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans. — Joan Robinson · 1962R.H. Tawney2 quotes
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 · 1926Private 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 · 1926Amartya Sen1 quote
No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy. — Amartya Sen · 1999Charles Babbage1 quote
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 · 1832Charlotte Perkins Gilman1 quote
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 · 1898Friedrich Engels1 quote
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 · 1845Friedrich Hayek1 quote
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 · 1944John Stuart Mill1 quote
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 · 1848Laurence J. Peter1 quote
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter · 1969Ludwig von Mises1 quote
The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world. — Ludwig von Mises · 1949Paul Krugman1 quote
Productivity isn't everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. — Paul Krugman · 1994Robert Torrens1 quote
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 · 1821Thomas Robert Malthus1 quote
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio. — Thomas Robert Malthus · 1798