Capital Quotes

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The inescapable conclusion is that the direct contribution of man-hours and capital accumulation would hardly account for more than a tenth of the rate of growth in per capita product — and probably less. The large remainder must be assigned to an increase in efficiency in the productive resources, or the effects of changing arrangements, or to the impact of technological change, or to all three

Capital is a coward. It flees from corruption and bad policies, conflict and unpredictability. It shuns ignorance, disease and illiteracy. Capital goes where it is welcomed and where investors can be confident of a return on the resources they have put at risk. It goes to countries where women can work, children can read, and entrepreneurs can dream.

A company's success no longer depends primarily on its ability to raise investment capital. Success depends on the ability of its people to learn together and produce new ideas

There can be no doubt that the architects who planned and built the Ananda temple were Indians. Everything in this temple from Sikhara to the basement as well as the numerous stone sculptures found in its corridors and the terra-cotta... adoring its basement and terraces, bear the indubitable stamp of Indian genius and craftsmanship... In this sense, we may take it, therefore, that the Ananda, though built in the Burmese capital, is an Indian temple.

For fifty years Private Eye has pretty much in most issues exposed a miscarriage of justice, and a lot of them have been murders. Over the years, large numbers of these cases have been found to be entirely wrong, and the men convicted — almost always men, there was a couple of women — have been found innocent, so we would have killed those people, and in some of those very high profile cases which involved terrorism cases, we would have made very dangerous new martyrs by executing people who turned out not to have committed the murders involved. So on a purely practical basis, whatever you think it says about the civilised nature of your society or not, I think it would be incredibly dangerous to have capital punishment back.

I, Christopher Logue, was baptized the year
Many thousands of Englishmen,
Fists clenched, their bellies empty,
Walked day and night on the capital city.

Christopher Logue

The entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labour. Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future.

Capital crimes and highway robberies are of comparatively rare occurrence in the North, but in smaller delinquencies, such as pilfering and petty rogueries of every shade and description, the common classes can very successfully compete with any other people. Nothing indeed can be left exposed or unguarded without great danger of its being immediately stolen.... there seems to exist a great deal of repugnance, even among the better classes, to apprehending thieves; as if the mere act of informing against them was considered dishonorable.

All the great establishments, of every kind, now in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing a great number of wage laborers, would be broken up; for few or no persons, who could hire capital and do business for themselves would consent to labour for wages for another.

Lysander Spooner

The Marxist critique is only a critique of capital, a critique coming from the heart of the middle and petit bourgeois classes, for which Marxism has served for a century as a latent ideology…. The Marxist seeks a good use of economy. Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one more step in the banalization of life toward the "good use" of the social!

Jean Baudrillard

Neoliberalism, despite the claim by its adherents that it was simply an economic theory, was from its beginnings a class project articulated on behalf of the interests of capital.

Marnie Holborow

So long as we confine our attention to income from property, and leave out of account any increment or decrement in the value of prospects due to changes in people's own earning power (accumulation or decumulation of Human Capital), Income No. 1 ex post is not a subjective affair, like other kinds of income; it is almost completely objective.

Governments first of all have been able to amass, through the taxation process, large sums of capital which they have redistributed to persons or groups, already large holders of capital, through official subsidies.

Immanuel Wallerstein

Instead the economy is a subsystem of the finite biosphere that supports it. When the economy's expansion encroaches too much on the surrounding biosphere, we begin to sacrifice natural capital (animals, plants, minerals and fossil fuels) that is worth more than the manmade capital (roads, factories, appliances) added by 'growth'.

Capital is defined as the sum total of nonhuman assets that can be owned and exchanged on some market.

On the 25th of June I arrived safely at Santa Fé,— but again rode back to meet the wagons, which did not reach the capital till the 4th of July. We did not encounter a very favorable reception from 'his majesty,' Gov. Armijo. He had just established his arbitrary impost of $500 per wagon, which bore rather heavily upon us; for we had an overstock of coarse articles which we had merely brought along for the purpose of increasing the strength of our company, by adding to the number of our wagons.

Nature awareness, ecological worries and reactions to animal abuse are not signs of mankind at last getting conscious of its impact on the rest of the planet, but of the necessity for capital to think globally, and to take all past and present into account, from Maya temples to whales and genes. Everything it dominates has to be controlled and classified in order to be managed. What is marketable must be protected. Capital owns the world and no owner can afford to be too careless about his possessions.

Did you really JUST fall, Jeffrey? Why does everybody in my family talk in these dramatic CAPITAL LETTERS all the time? Why am I the only calm one?

Jordan Sonnenblick

I would rather be defeated than make capital out of my religion.

James A. Garfield

I have also seen it stated that Capital punishment is murder in its worst form. I should like to know upon what principle of human society these assertions are based and justified.

Benjamin Tucker

It is a self-evident truth that in a healthy community there is no place for the vicious, the weak of body, the shiftless, or the improvident. As Professor Sumner, of Yale, asserts in his book. The Forgotten Man, 'Every part of capital which is wasted on the vicious, the idle, and the shiftless, is so much taken from the capital available to reward the independent and productive laborer.'

Calvin Coolidge

Suffering is our capital, our natural resource. Not oil or gas – but suffering. It is the only thing we are able to produce consistently. I'm always looking for the answer: why doesn't our suffering convert into freedom? Is it truly all in vain? Chaadayev was right: Russia is a country without memory, it's a space of total amnesia, a virgin consciousness for criticism and reflection.

Svetlana Alexievich

It is some relief to move from the exalted realm of philosophical ethics to the mundane realm of scientific methodology. However, I rather shy away from discussions of Methodology with a capital M. To paraphrase Shaw: Those who can do science; those who can't prattle about its methodology.

When the Manufacturing Capitalist of Europe shall advert to the many important advantages, which have been intimated, in the Course of this report, he cannot but perceive very powerful inducements to a transfer of himself and his Capital to the United States.

Alexander Hamilton

When the regime wanted additional industrial capacity or resources for the military economy which the private sector could not provide, it was created (or conquered) by the state… during the Third Reich state ownership expanded into the productive sectors, based on the strategic industries, aviation, aluminum, synthetic oil and rubber, chemicals, iron and steel, and army equipment. Government finances for state-owned enterprises rose from RM 4,000m in 1933 to RM 16,000m 10 years later; the capital assets of state-owned industry doubled during the same period; the number of state-owned firms topped 500.