Capitalism quotes

Explore the philosophy driving our economies with thought-provoking quotes on Capitalism - the system of private ownership and free markets fostering innovation, competition, and economic growth.

Capitalism is the only way … It makes America great, England OK and France terrible.

- Ron Swanson

Capitalism: God's way of determining who is smart and who is poor.

- Ron Swanson

When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.

- David Korten

If there is to be a human future, we must bring ourselves into balanced relationship with one another and the Earth.

- David Korten

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

- Milton Friedman

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

- Milton Friedman

He moves fastest who moves alone.

- Milton Friedman

Anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting.

- Milton Friedman

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.

- Milton Friedman

Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.

- Adam Smith

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.

- Adam Smith

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

- Adam Smith

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.

- Adam Smith

The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

- Adam Smith

No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.

- Adam Smith

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

- Adam Smith

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

- Adam Smith

Individual ambition serves the common good.

- Adam Smith

Every man lives by exchanging.

- Adam Smith

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

- Adam Smith