Selected economics quotes

1. Justice should be cheap but judges expensive.

2. China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

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

4. Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

5. Polly: Education with socialists, it's like sex, all right as long as you don't have to pay for it.

6. The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

7. Women's sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism.

8. There is no road to wealth so easy and respectable as that of matrimony.

9. Only a fool thinks price and value are the same.

10. Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.

11. Money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.

12. The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

13. The trade of the petty usurer is hated with most reason: it makes a profit from currency itself, instead of making it from the process which currency was meant to serve. Their common characteristic is obviously their sordid avarice.

14. Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.

15. The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.

16. 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.

17. Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

18. The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states.

19. See, when the GOVERNMENT spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of TAXPAYERS, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

20. If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

21. What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.

22. There's an expectation these days that novels - like any other consumer product - should be made on a production line, with one dropping from the conveyor belt every couple of years.

23. And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

24. Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

25. Buying and selling is essentially antisocial.

26. Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.

27. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now, consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.

28. Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it.

29. Human beings are not efficiently designed for a capitalist system of production.

30. I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!

31. The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down.

32. Money is like muck, not good except it be spread.

33. Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.

34. Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

35. Christianity doesn't come into it. George Bush and Tony Blair are not Christians. Religious people believe in the prophets, peace be upon them. Bush believes in the profits and how to get a piece of them. So don't ever confuse this with a war of civilizations.

36. For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

37. The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.

38. The slaves of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss.

39. Under communism (socialism), there is no incentive to supply people with anything they need or want, including safety.

40. Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process.

41. Because the - all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those - changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be - or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the - like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate - the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those - if that growth is affected, it will help on the red. (4 February 2005)[59]

42. 'The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.' Centesimus Annus, 1991

43. I'm a free-marketeer. I believe in free markets, but... sometimes you have things that look like free markets but aren't because of artificial reasons. I'm not very happy with the current state of what calls itself free market economy in the world because you've got all these grotesque monopolies that are able to gain [sic] the system in a way that's to their advantage by virtue of their power, and that's not a free market. A real free market has some kind of counter-veiling [sic] influence from the government to keep a monopoly in check, but this government... it's not about free marketing principles, it's about greed pure and simple. And this government wants to assure that the other people that they went to college with get just as rich as they do. This country is going to make Mexico look like Sweden inside of ten years in terms of wealth distribution, because there are no countervailing forces. They've eliminated tax basically for the ultra-rich, they've eliminated any control over monopolies, the greedy have free reign [sic] and its just going to be the super rich and the peasants.

44. Suppose any person to be put in possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds of gold in its gravel; countless herds of cattle in its pastures; houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores; but suppose, after all, that he could get no servants? In order that he may be able to have servants, some one in his neighbourhood must be poor, and in want of his gold - or his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and that no servants are to be had. He must, therefore, bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough his own ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can eat no more than another man could eat, and wear no more than another man could wear. He must lead a life of severe and common labour to procure even ordinary comforts; he will be ultimately unable to keep either houses in repair, or fields in cultivation; and forced to content himself with a poor man's portion of cottage and garden, in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will hardly mock at himself by calling 'his own.'

45. The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they are effective, produce materially, and are active under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will. The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of the politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics of a people. Men are the producers of their conception, ideas, etc. - real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

46. The commodity is first of all, an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind. The nature of these needs, whether they arise, for example, from the stomach, or the imagination, makes no difference. Nor does it matter here how the thing satisfies man's need, whether directly as a means of subsistence, i.e. an object of consumption, or indirectly as a means of production

47. ...that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same...

48. On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are governmental functions. We have established elaborate constitutional, parliamentary and judicial provisions to control these functions, to assure that taxes are imposed so far as possible in accordance with the preferences and desires of the public - after all, 'taxation without representation' was one of the battle cries of the American Revolution. We have a system of checks and balances to separate the legislative function of imposing taxes and enacting expenditures from the executive function of collecting taxes and administering expenditure programs and from the judicial function of mediating disputes and interpreting the law. Here the businessman - self-selected or appointed directly or indirectly by stockholders - is to be simultaneously legislator, executive and, jurist. He is to decide whom to tax by how much and for what purpose, and he is to spend the proceeds - all this guided only by general exhortations from on high to restrain inflation, improve the environment, fight poverty and so on and on.

49. Koylu milletin efendisidir

50. ...there are no two points of view more antithetical than classical liberalism and capitalism -- and that's why when the University of Chicago publishes a bicentennial edition of Smith, they have to distort the text (which they did): because as a true classical liberal, Smith was strongly opposed to all of the idiocy they now sprout in his name.

51. In fact, just take a look at the history of 'trucking and bartering' itself; look at the history of modern capitalism, about which we know a lot. The first thing you'll notice is, peasants had to be driven by force and violence into a wage-labor system they did not want; then major efforts were undertaken - conscious efforts - to create wants. In fact, if you look back, there's a whole interesting literature of conscious discussion of the need to manifacture wants in the general population. It's happened over the whole long stretch of capitalism of course, but one place where you can see it very nicely encapsulated is around the time when slavery was terminated. It's very dramatic too at cases like these. For example, in 1831 there was a big slave revolt in Jamaica - which was one of the things that led the British to decide to give up slavery in their colonies: after some slave revolts, they basically said, 'It's not paying anymore.' So within a couple of years the British wanted to move from a slave economy to a so-called 'free' economy, but they still wanted the basic structure to remain exactly the same - and if you take a look back at the parliamentary debates in England at the time, they were talking very consciously about all this. They were saying: look, we've got to keep it the way it is, the masters have to become the owners, the slave have to become the happy workers - somehow we've got to work it all out. Well, there was a little problem in Jamaica: since there was a lot of open land there, when the British let the slaves go free they just wanted to move out onto the land and be perfectly happy, they didn't want to work for the British sugar plantations anymore. So what everyone was asking in Parliament in London was, 'How can we force them to keep working for us, even when they're no longer enslaved into it?' Alright, two things were decided upon: first, they would use state force to close off the open land and prevent people from going and surviving on their own. And secondly, they realized that since all these workers didn't really want a lot of things - they just wanted to satisfy their basic needs, which they could easily do in that tropical climate - the British capitalists would have to start creating a whole set of wants for them, and make them start desiring things they didn't then desire, so then the only way they'd be able to satisfy their new material desires would be by working for wages in the British sugar plantations. There was very conscious discussion of the need to create wants - and in fact, extensive efforts were then undertaken to do exactly what they do on T.V. today: to create wants, to make you want the latest pair of sneakers you don't really need, so then people will be driven into a wage-labor society. And that pattern has been repeated over and over again through the whole entire history of capitalism. In fact, what the whole history of capitalism shows is that people have had to be driven into situations which are then claimed to be their nature. But if the history of capitalism shows anything, it shows it's not their nature, that they've had to be forced into it, and that that effort has had to be maintained right until this day.

52. Rio de Janeiro, incidentally, is not the poor part of the country, that sort of the rich part of the country. It's not the northeast, where 35 million people or so, nobody knows what happens to them, or cares. But Rio de Janeiro, that's where people are looking, the rich parts. And this journal is a science journal, kinda like Science in the United States. It was studying malnutrition. And here's the figures it had for Rio de Janeiro: infants from 0 to 5 months, severe malnutrition, meaning medically severe, 67%; 5 months to a year, 41%; a year to 5 years, 11%. Now the reason of course for the decline, from 67 to 41 to 11, is that they will die. So that's what happens under the conditions of the economic miracle, like in Guatemala. Now, it's a little wrong to say that the people die. The fact is, they don't die. We kill them, that's what happens. We kill them by carrying out policies, supporting the regimes of the kind that I've described. And by intervening with force and violence to suppress and destroy any attempt, however minimal, even on a speck like Grenada, we've got to stop any attempt to bring some change into this. That's the history of our hemisphere.

53. I want to continue this discussion about oil and alternative fuel sources and so forth and the whole notion of a free market, and entrepreneurism, and zero-sum games. Way too many of you, because of the effort to demonize oil - not just because of the mistaken notion that our purchases of oil are funding terrorism. That's ridiculous. Terrorists are not using oil revenues to be funded. Even that aside, oil has been successfully demonized in this country to the point that otherwise intelligent, educated people think we can just get rid of it tomorrow. They're operating under the assumption that there is an alternative energy already out there, 'We just refuse to use it,' because Big Oil and Big Lobbyists and Big Republicans are keeping us from this alternative energy. Let me tell you. Look at me, folks. Look at me. The only alternative energy that we have right now or for the next 20 or 30 years, is the energy we refuse to drill for in ANWR: oil. The only alternative energy we have for the next 20 or 30 years is oil in the Gulf of Mexico that we refuse to drill for but the ChiComs and the Cubans are drilling for it in the Gulf, and the Mexicans are. We did lay claim to a huge field up in the Arctic Circle recently. But the liberal Democrats will not let our country pursue this alternative energy. They will not let us drill for it; they will not let us refine it. They will not allow it to happen. Above and beyond that, this zero-sum game aspect, the idea that we can just get rid of oil tomorrow or next year or five years from now, and replace it with something that's just as productive, efficient, and economical is absurd. It is just intellectually absurd. So is the notion that oil is evil. So is the notion that it has been so demonized. Oil is not evil. Oil is our friend. It is one of our best friends. It is one of our most valuable friends.

54. I maintain to you, if you have any agreement with things that I have exaggerated here - if you do hate the automobile industry, if you hate Wall Street, if you hate the banks, if you hate the financial industry, if you hate the airline industry, if you hate the pharmaceutical industry, if you hate retail - if you have resentments for all these industries, and think that your only protection is government - then you really, really need to grab yourself by the wrist as hard as you can and ask yourself, 'What the hell happened to you and who made you feel this way?' The one area of the media that people respect and like in conjunction with American liberals and socialists has made you feel this way. You hate oil? Is it rational? What the hell, folks? 'That's right, Mr. Limbaugh! It's five dollars in California, four dollars elsewhere, three dollars other places. It's not right. Somebody's gouging us.' Wait a minute! I thought you guys were all hoping for high prices down the road so it would lead to conservation? You can't make liberals happy no matter what they get. Even if it's what they want, it's never enough. There's a political party, and its allies who feed off of your paranoia, feed off of your hatred for all things great in America.

55. The United States is not a zero-sum game. Meaning when somebody gets hired, it does not mean somebody gets fired. Meaning when somebody earns an additional five dollars, somebody has lost an additional five dollars. It doesn't mean that it's either oil or else. The whole concept of the United States, the capitalist system, is the free market - and the free market is fueled by freedom! Freedom leads to ingenuity, invention, entrepreneurism, and what is the pursuit? The pursuit is profit. The profit derives from success. Now, there's some charlatans in our free market. The people in carbon offset businesses are sharks. They are pure frauds! They are convincing people to pay them X-amount of dollars for whatever, to plant trees, to soak up the additional carbon footprint of what is 'allowed.' Allowed by who? Who says that there is a maximum carbon footprint? There is no such law, there is no such standard, because we have freedom! If you want to have a 30,000-square-foot house and a big-ass swimming pool and a bunch of outdoor lights and you can afford it and you pay for it, and there are people that provide it. End of story. You are not guilty! You are not guilty. No, you are not. Just because somebody else doesn't have a 30,000-square-foot house, doesn't have a big-ass swimming pool and outdoor lights, doesn't mean they're innocent and you are guilty. As this relates to alternative fuels, oil is the most plentiful energy source we have. It's the most efficient. But while oil is being used, and while it is being exploited, the United States taxpayer, ladies and gentlemen, already spends billions of dollars on alternative energy research - and you can bet that the private sector is investing in it, too, and do you know why? Because we are a growing country and everybody needs energy! We're not going to stay the United States if we start reducing energy usage. Conservation is not the answer. So because a free market's percolating and gurgling and burbling out there, somewhere in this mix will come the magical alternative fuel source. It may not be for a hundred years, it may not be for 50, but it will happen, and it will happen all by itself ... if we stay free.

56. Here numerous persons, with big wigs many of them, and austere aspect, whom I take to be Professors of the Dismal Science, start up in an agitated vehement manner: but the Premier resolutely beckons them down again

57. If treasury bills are emitted on a tax appropriated for their redemption in fifteen years, and (to insure preference in the first moments of competition) bearing an interest of six per cent, there is no one who would not take them in preference to the bank paper now afloat, on a principle of patriotism as well as interest; and they would be withdrawn from circulation into private hoards to a considerable amount. Their credit once established, others might be emitted, bottomed also on a tax, but not bearing interest; and if ever their credit faltered, open public loans, on which these bills alone should be received as specie. These, operating as a sinking fund, would reduce the quantity in circulation, so as to maintain that in an equilibrium with specie. It is not easy to estimate the obstacles which, in the beginning, we should encounter in ousting the banks from their possession of the circulation; but a steady and judicious alternation of emissions and loans would reduce them in time.

58. Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

59. A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.

60. This poor little one-horse town.

61. He is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.

62. Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.

63. The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered, is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty, and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in Darkness have noticed it -- they have noticed it, and have begun to show alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization.

64. The lack of money is the root of all evil.

65. A Jewish beggar is not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but there are few men that can say they have seen that spectacle.

66. It does look as if Massachusetts were in a fair way to embarrass me with kindnesses this year. In the first place, a Massachusetts judge has just decided in open court that a Boston publisher may sell, not only his own property in a free and unfettered way, but also may as freely sell property which does not belong to him but to me; property which he has not bought and which I have not sold. Under this ruling I am now advertising that judge's homestead for sale, and, if I make as good a sum out of it as I expect, I shall go on and sell out the rest of his property.

67. There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

68. America is built on a tilt and everything loose slides to California.

69. The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.

70. I'm Grant Foster for public television - Where a hundred people work so thirty can watch.

71. For the tourist's brown pennies scattered at the old church door, the ragged papooses jump, and bite the dust.

72. 'There is no rule so sure as that one that the same mill that grinds out fortunes above a certain size at the top, grinds out paupers at the bottom.' -- speech in U.S. Senate April 4, 1932

73. Magnus inter opes inops.

74. Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

75. I mean, let's face it, we didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

76. 'America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.'

77. Nothing is more useless in developing a nation's economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development more than the financial burden of war. War is the arch enemy of national progress and the modern scourge of civilized men.

78. The link between peace and stability on the one hand, and social and economic growth on the other, is dialectic. Peace, poverty, and backwardness cannot mix in one region.

79. If Western firms pay developing countries' suppliers' starvation wages in order to feed the West's ever increasing consumer demand, can we call that 'partnership'?

80. There remains the ordinary Communist solution. This has taken various forms; the simplest being a voluntary association of individuals based on the principle of common property, and in which every person works for the community according to fixed rules. There are many successful instances of this, on a small scale, in the United States, but we cannot suppose such a solution to be possible for society as a whole. It has only been tried with picked materials, whereas our object is rather to improve the great mass of the population. The Communism of recent European theorists, of whom the best known is Lassalle, presents a somewhat different aspect. It aims at the appropriation of all instruments of production by the State, which is to take charge of the whole national industry and direct it. But the practical difficulty of such a scheme is obviously overwhelming. The objections to a Communistic solution do not apply to Socialism in a more modified shape. Historically speaking, Socialism has already shown itself in England in the extension of State interference. It has produced the Factory Laws, and it is now beginning to advance further and interfere directly in the division of produce between the workmen and their employers

81. They did that when they tried to link Obama to Reagan early in the campaign. They're essentially assuming that people are too stupid to realize that this is a bad idea that won't save them any money at the pump... Hillary Clinton starts her rallies by saying we need jobs, jobs, jobs. Well, by the estimates of the Department of Transportation this will cost 300,000 jobs just this summer in the construction trade... It will bring repairs of our highways to a screeching halt. She talks about a findfall profits tax on the oil companies, which is a good idea: Obama and others support this as well. The problem is, that won't pay for this gas tax holiday because she's already said that the money from a windfall profits tax would be used to develop renewable energy. So she's spending that nine billion dollars twice. What she's hoping is that only elites will know any of this and that everybody else just won't care. The problem with this is that a lot of elites are superdelegates and they're not buying this.... It's a hail Mary pass, and what they're figuring is if they can run up a big victory in Indiana with this pander, and a lot of people drive long distances in Indiana, then the superdelegates will figure, Hey, maybe the best pander is the best ticket in the fall and that Obama is too hung up on the merits of these issues, the substance of these issues instead of the politics of the issues that we need to win in the old-fashioned way. That might work with the superdelegates even though they don't agree with her on the merits of the gas tax. There are a lot of what are called low-information voters. They're really not reading the unanimous newspaper editorials against this.... The thing that's so onious about this idea is that there are other kinds of relief. You could get a tax credit for people at the low end of the income scale. You could give them other forms of relief. This is the single worst kind of relief because it's terrible for global warming, terrible for foreign policy, and terrible for jobs. It's just unfortunate that she had to embrace what people agree is the single worst policy idea of the entire campaign.

82. The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. The most dramatic period of instability in output was, of course, the period between the two wars, which includes the severe (monetary) contractions of 1920-1, 1929-33, and 1937-8. No other 20 year period in American history contains as many as three such severe contractions. This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System... and that the severity of each of the major contractions - 1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank... To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.

83. ...capitalism is basically a system where everything is for sale, and the more money you have, the more you can get. And, in particular, that's true of freedom. Freedom is one of the commodities that is for sale, and if you are affluent, you can have a lot of it. It shows up in all sorts of ways. It shows up if you get in trouble with the law, let's say, or in any aspect of life it shows up. And for that reason it makes a lot of sense, if you accept capitalist system, to try to accumulate property, not just because you want material welfare, but because that guarantees your freedom, it makes it possible for you to amass that commodity. [...] what you're going to find is that the defense of free institutions will largely be in the hands of those who benefit from them, namely the wealthy, and the powerful. They can purchase that commodity and, therefore, they want those institutions to exist, like free press, and all that.

84. [Gross national product] measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

85. I think that we could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to build. it would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly accelerating economic progress - not material welfare as an end in itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would be proud to have built.

86. I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.

87. It is one thing to assure a man the legal right to eat in a restaurant; it is another thing to assure that he can earn the money to eat there.

88. Our gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worth while. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. (University of Kansas, 3-18-67)

89. Men are not really born either hopelessly idle, or preternaturally industrious. They may move in one direction or the other as will or circumstances dictate, but it is open to any man to work.

90. I spoke to my dad and he said it took close to 90 dollars to raise me, but that was me and my sister and my sister moved out when she was 16, so sometimes it can knock you up to triple digits to raise a kid.

91. 'A key strategy towards restoring stability is developing targeted approaches to poverty reduction across different sectors coupled with the specific social provisions for the poor and the most vulnerable groups in society.'

92. A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

93. Socialism is a new form of slavery.

94. What is the 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.

95. A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission and the babysitter were worth it.

96. It's only a movie, and, after all, we're all grossly overpaid....

97. It cannot be emphasized too strongly that art, as such, does not 'pay,' to use an American expression - at least, not in the beginning - and that the art that has to pay its own way is apt to become vitiated and cheap.

98. Economy and ideology. The claim (presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism) that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political and historical works.

99. Life is a business that does not cover the costs.

100. At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.