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Capitalism is based on self-interest and self-esteem; it holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtue, not vices. It is this superlatively moral system that the welfare statists propose to improve upon by means of preventative law, snooping bureaucrats, and the chronic goad of fear.
ALAN GREENSPAN, The Assault on Integrity
The forces of a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU, New York Times Magazine, Sept. 7, 1958
Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other right.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, speech to Congress, Dec. 3, 1861
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
KARL MARX, The Communist Manifesto
The revolution eats its own. Capitalism recreates itself.
MORDECAI RICHLER, Cocksure
Predatory capitalism created a complex industrial system and an advanced technology; it permitted a considerable extension of democratic practice and fostered certain liberal values, but within limits that are now being pressed and must be overcome. It is not a fit system for the mid-twentieth century.
NOAM CHOMSKY, Language and Freedom
Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth -- the soil and the labourer.
America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages, and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.
AYN RAND, Capitalism: The Unknown Deal
The things you own end up owning you.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK, Fight Club
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
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