The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
David Ricardo3 quotes
There is no way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down. — David Ricardo · 1822Nothing 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 · 1817Joseph Schumpeter3 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 · 1942Every piece of business strategy... Must be seen in its role in the perennial gale of creative destruction. — Joseph Schumpeter · 1942Abraham Lincoln2 quotes
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and now, that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel. — Abraham Lincoln · 1837Ludwig von Mises2 quotes
Laissez faire does not mean: Let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: Let each individual choose how he wants to cooperate in the social division of labor; let the consumers determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. Planning means: Let the government alone choose and enforce its rulings by the apparatus of coercion and compulsion. — Ludwig von Mises · 1949The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world. — Ludwig von Mises · 1949Adam Smith1 quote
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 · 1776Anthony Trollope1 quote
A desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray. — Anthony Trollope · 1864Benjamin Franklin1 quote
Remember that Time is Money. — Benjamin Franklin · 1748Blake1 quote
We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado, anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. — Blake · 1992Calvin Coolidge1 quote
Civilization and profits go hand in hand. — Calvin Coolidge · 1920Cornelius Vanderbilt1 quote
You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for the law is too slow. I'll ruin you. — Cornelius Vanderbilt · 1853David Livingstone1 quote
No permanent elevation of a people can be effected without commerce. — David Livingstone · 1861Edward Abbey1 quote
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. — Edward Abbey · 1984Frank Buchman1 quote
There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed. — Frank Buchman · 1938Franklin D. Roosevelt1 quote
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1937Friedrich 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 · 1845Gordon Gekko1 quote
Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms, greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind. — Gordon Gekko · 1987H.L. Mencken1 quote
Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor. — H.L. Mencken · 1928Henry Ford1 quote
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business. — Henry Ford · 1919Iosef Tarasov1 quote
Everything's got a price, bitch. — Iosef Tarasov · 2014Ivan F. Boesky1 quote
Greed is all right... Greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself. — Ivan F. Boesky · 1986James Connolly1 quote
The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave. — James Connolly · 1915John Maynard Keynes1 quote
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. — John Maynard Keynes · 1930Karl Marx1 quote
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. — Karl Marx · 1848Louis Winthorpe III1 quote
Think big, think positive, never show any sign of weakness. Always go for the throat. Buy low, sell high. Fear? That's the other guy's problem. Nothing you have ever experienced will prepare you for the unbridled carnage you are about to witness. Superbowl, The World Series—they don't know what pressure is. In this building, it's either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me? — Louis Winthorpe III · 1983Milton Friedman1 quote
History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. — Milton Friedman · 1962Oliver Goldsmith1 quote
Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,
And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1764Ray Kroc1 quote
Business is war. It's dog eat dog, rat eat rat. If my competitor were drowning, I'd walk over and I'd put a hose right in his mouth. — Ray Kroc · 2016Ronald Reagan1 quote
Freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress. — Ronald Reagan · 1985Theodor Adorno1 quote
Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past. — Theodor Adorno · 1959Thomas Edison1 quote
For most of my life I refused to work at any problem unless its solution seemed to be capable of being put to commercial use. — Thomas Edison · 1917