Economy Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

What thrust us into war were not Hitler's political teachings: the cause, this time, was his successful attempt to establish a new economy. The causes of the war were: envy, greed, and fear.

J. F. C. Fuller

The world will not end. This is ridiculous. I think it's like 2000. It's a great trick to do business and earn lots of money because stupid people hoard things. This is a stimulator of the economy.

Economic liberalisation is a world phenomenon. Socialist countries, capitalist countries, all of them, have to take to liberalisation. The liberalisation took place first in Britain, then in the United States under President Reagan, these were not liberalising from a socialist system. I think it is because of the stage of economy which the world has reached at present and the stage of technology. At every historical and technological and economic age there are policies which would be suitable for that period and countries. We have to adopt policies, dictated by the circumstances and the necessities of the time.

K. R. Narayanan

Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. The second was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy. The third was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare. The fourth was the liberal state. Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization.

Populism is at its essence [...] just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. [...] One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government.

Europeans were anxious to acquire gold in Africa because there was a pressing need for gold coin within the growing capitalist money economy.

Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people instead of an industrial oligarchy

William O. Douglas

In today's knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn. Jobs in the information technology sector, for example, pay 85 percent more than the private sector average.

Advertising is the art and sole of capitalism. It captures a moment of time through the lens of commerce, reflecting and affecting our lives, making us laugh and cry, while simultaneously giving traction to the engine that propels this free market economy forward into the future.

Jef I. Richards

The things you hear now about European unemployment — that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed to adjust, that there are inflationary fears — are the same things that were said during the early 1930. It is well established that government spending began to pull Germany out of its slump in 1935. There is no known reason why spending for peace can't do as well at getting the economy going as spending for war.

Lawrence Summers

Why do economists persist in modelling the economy with static tools when dynamic ones exist; why do they treat as stationery an entity which is forever changing?

Nowadays enthusiasm is accounted folly; truth, cynicism; dissimulation, self-control; stiffness of manners, dignity; deception, cleverness; hypocrisy, decency; selfishness, economy; freedom of thought, effrontery; and superstition, the prop of human morals. What progress in language!

When you (President Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau) called me at Lomaloma in December 1987 and asked me to form an Interim Government to prepare the country for a return to parliamentary rule, I knew the task at hand would be onerous. Fiji had experienced the ordeal of two military coups. Society was fractured, the economy was tottering and the country had been ostracised by some of its oldest friends and allies. There was no Parliament and no properly functioning political system. Even institutions of State, such as the judiciary, were seriously weakened, to the extent that the citizenry justifiably feared a breakdown in law and order. The business community was hit by a slump in sales and confidence, leading to reduced earnings and loss of jobs.

Economists don't seem to have noticed that the economy sits entirely within the ecology.

The economy was never stronger in your lifetime. But statistics must not be sedatives. Economic power is important only as it is put to human use.

Lyndon B. Johnson

The importance of oaks both in the economy and in the forest ecosystem is big, but the exceptional part is that this tree plays in the old beliefs and legends.

Marek Żukow-Karczewski

Women - why aren't you running the world yet? Frankly I'm disappointed in you. Men are still far too dominant for their own good, and consequently we've made a testosterone-sodden pig's ear of just about everything: politics, the economy, religion, the environment... you name it, it's in a gigantic man-wrought mess.

Charlie Brooker

The wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity... that's all there is. That's the whole economy. That's where all the economic activity and jobs come from. These biological systems are the sustaining wealth of the world.

Will the tax cut destroy America's prosperity? Probably not. As Adam Smith observed, there's a deal of ruin in a nation. We have a huge, resilient economy that can survive and recover from even quite bad government policies.
Yet while the tax cut may not be a matter of economic life or death, it is a very serious issue. For one thing, like it or not, the tax cut has become the central political issue in the United States right now. Conservatives who want to reshape America view passage of a large tax cut as a first step toward realizing their vision. For that reason, those who do not share this vision feel, rightly, that they must oppose the plan.

It remains to be seen, for example whether China can continue to develop as a market economy while still retaining an authoritarian communist political system.

We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.

James Callaghan

Hayek's blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted.

It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society.

Murray Rothbard

To realize the full possibilities of this economy, we must reach beyond our own borders, to shape the revolution that is tearing down barriers and building new networks among nations and individuals, and economies and cultures: globalization. It's the central reality of our time.

There is plenty of room to make a profit in a zero-carbon economy; but the profit motive is not going to be the midwife for that great transformation.