Not Socialism

Sunday, March 17, 2019 – Not Socialism

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes. ~ Oswald Spengler

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone. ~ John Maynard Keynes

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. ~ Milton Friedman

Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class. ~ Al Capone

Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation. ~ Eugene V. Debs

A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. ~ Howard Scott

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self-interest backed by force. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Worldwide capitalism kills more people every day then Hitler did. And he was crazy. ~ Ken Livingstone

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate. ~ Bertrand Russell

Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy. ~ David Korten

Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way. ~ David Korten

Capitalism, inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest. ~ Joseph A. Schumpeter

If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women. ~ Christopher Hampton

Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians. ~ Pat Robertson

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

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy. ~ Fran Lebowitz

There is a serious tendency toward capitalism among the well-to-do peasants. ~ Mao Tse-Tung

The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression. ~ Felix Frankfurter

Capitalism is what people do if you leave them alone. ~ Kenneth Minogue

The crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. ~ Albert Einstein

If you like capitalism, you will positively love depressions, because they are one and the same, like manic-depressives and their cycles, like spouse-abusers and their storms of violence. ~ Kenneth Smith

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell. ~ Frank Borman

Unemployment is capitalism’s way of getting you to plant a garden. ~ Orson Scott Card

A tension has always existed between the capitalist imperative to maximize efficiency at any cost and the moral imperatives of culture, which historically have served as a counterweight to the moral blindness of the market. This is another example of the cultural contradictions of capitalism – the tendency over time for the economic impulse to erode the moral underpinnings of society. ~ Michael Pollan

There is hardly anything in the world that some man can’t make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man’s lawful prey. ~ John Ruskin

When we truly discover love, capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary. ~ Will O’Brien

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor. ~ Thomas Jefferson

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville

Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality. ~ Lord Acton

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. ~ Confucius

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people … turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government … Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. ~ Alexander Hamilton

He mocks the people who proposes that the government shall protect the rich, and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor. ~ Grover Cleveland

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last ten years, and I hope the American public is catching on. ~ Warren Buffett

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor. ~ John Ruskin

Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

No man is rich enough to buy back his past. ~ Oscar Wilde

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community. ~ Andrew Carnegie, Gospel of Wealth

This is an impressive crowd: the Have’s and Have-More’s. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base. ~ George W. Bush

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes. ~ Gore Vidal

A tremendous number of people in America work very hard at something that bores them. Even a rich man thinks he has to go down to the office every day. Not because he likes it but because he can’t think of anything else to do. ~ W. H. Auden

Do not waste your time on social questions. What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich. ~ Samuel Johnson

There are people who have money and people who are rich. ~ Coco Chanel

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody? ~ Princess Diana

These are my new shoes. They’re good shoes. They won’t make you rich like me, they won’t make you rebound like me, and they definitely won’t make you handsome like me. They’ll only make you have shoes like me. That’s it. ~ Charles Barkley

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be. ~ Rita Rudner

Science in the modern world has many uses; its chief use, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich. ~ G. K. Chesterton

The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. ~ G. K. Chesterton

It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor, as long as you’ve got money. ~ Joe E. Lewis

In a rich man’s house there is no place to spit but his face. ~ Diogenes of Sinope

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The only thing I like about rich people is their money. ~ Nancy Astor

You can never become rich unless you like rich people. ~ Doug Coupland

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: “Whose?” ~ Don Marquis

Stand not too near the rich man lest he destroy thee, and not too far away lest he forget thee. ~ Aneurin Bevan

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving. ~ Russell Green

I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. ~ Pablo Picasso

I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I’ll bet I’d be darling at it. ~ Dorothy Parker

If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars. ~ J. Paul Getty

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. ~ Jane Austen

Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851