This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
You know, the only trouble with capitalism is the capitalists. They’re too damn greedy.
Capitalism | Trouble |
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.
Everything new endangers something old. A new machine replaces human hands; a new source of power threatens old businesses; a new trade route wipes out the supremacy of old ports and brings prosperity to new ones. This is the price that must be paid for progress and it is worth it.
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first
Ability | Freedom | Important | Individual | Reality | Revolution | Sense |
Affirmation from others is fickle and fleeting. If you want to make an impact during your lifetime, you have to trade the praise you could receive from others for the things of value that you can accomplish. You can’t be ‘one of the boys’ and follow your destiny at the same time.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system.
Capitalism | Greed | Organization | Will |
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well.
Capitalism | Choice | Day | Decision | Enough | Good | Public | World |
The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.
Capitalism | War |
I felt it my duty…to inflict upon the reader…my paradoxical conclusion: capitalism is being killed by its achievements.
Gentlemen, a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche.
Capitalism | Depression |
We have to define that word which good economists always try to avoid: capitalism is that form of private property economy in which innovations are carried out by means of borrowed money.
Capitalism | Good | Means | Property |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.
Leon Shenendoah, elected Tadodaho, aka Chief Leon Shenendoah
We must live in harmony with the Natural World and recognize that excessive exploitation can only lead to our own destruction. We cannot trade the welfare of our future generations for profit now. We must abide by the Natural Law or be victims of its ultimate reality. We must stand together, the four sacred colors of humans, as the one family we are, in the interest of peace. We must abolish nuclear and conventional weapons of war. When warriors are leaders, then you will have war. We must raise leaders of peace. We must unite the religions of the world as the spiritual force strong enough to prevail in peace. It is no longer good enough to cry, "Peace." We must act peace, live peace, and march in peace in alliance with the people of the world.
Enough | Family | Force | Future | Good | Harmony | Law | Peace | People | Sacred | Weapons | Will | World |
The genius of capitalism consists precisely in its lack of morality. Unless he is rich enough to hire his own choir, a capitalist is a fellow who, by definition, can ill afford to believe in anything other than the doctrine of the bottom line. Deprive a capitalist of his God-given right to lie and cheat and steal, and the poor sap stands a better than even chance of becoming one of the abominable wards of the state from whose grimy fingers the Reagan Administration hopes to snatch the ark of democracy.
Administration | Better | Capitalism | Chance | Doctrine | Enough | Genius | Right |
When trade is at stake, it is your last entrenchment; you must defend it, or perish.
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.