#capita

Joint-stock companies are yet in their infancy, and incorporated capital, instead of being a thing which can be overturned, is a thing which is becoming more and more indispensable. ↗

— William Graham Sumner

#being #capital #companies #incorporated #indispensable

The basic law of capitalism is you or I, not both you and I. ↗

— Karl Liebknecht

#both #capitalism #i #law #you

The man who is admired for the ingenuity of his larceny is almost always rediscovering some earlier form of fraud. The basic forms are all known, have all been practiced. The manners of capitalism improve. The morals may not. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#crime #economics #age

The race will find that capitalists and communists modify themselves so much during the ages that they end by being indistinguishable as democrats... ↗

— T.H. White

#communism #democrats #humor #politics #age

For if in careless summer days In groves of Ashtaroth we whored, Repentant now, when winds blow cold, We kneel before our rightful lord; The lord of all, the money-god, Who rules us blood and hand and brain, Who gives the roof that stops the wind, And, giving, takes away again; Who spies with jealous, watchful care, Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways, Who picks our words and cuts our clothes, And maps the pattern of our days; Who chills our anger, curbs our hope, And buys our lives and pays with toys, Who claims as tribute broken faith, Accepted insults, muted joys; Who binds with chains the poet’s wit, The navvy’s strength, the soldier’s pride, And lays the sleek, estranging shield Between the lover and his bride. ↗

— George Orwell

#condoms #money #poetry #poverty #sex

Because subjects like literature and art history have no obvious material pay-off, they tend to attract those who look askance at capitalist notions of utility. The idea of doing something purely for the delight of it has always rattled the grey-bearded guardians of the state. Sheer pointlessness has always been a deeply subversive affair. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#capitalist #literature #state #subversive #art

Now, quite apart from the fact that, from the point of view of the Earther, socialism suffers the devastating liability of only exhibiting internal contradictions when you are trying to use it as an adjunct to your own stupidity (unlike capitalism, which again, from the point of view of the Earther, happily has them built in from the start), it is the case that because Free Enterprise got there first and set up the house rules, it will always stay at least one kick ahead of its rivals. ↗

— Iain M. Banks

#earthers #economics #free-enterprise #socialism #art

Buffett was a billionaire who drove his own car, did his own taxes, and still lived in a home he had bought in 1958 for $31,500. He seemed to answer to a deeply rooted, distinctly American mythology, in which decency and common sense triumphed over cosmopolitan guile, and in which an idealized past held firm against a rootless and too hurriedly changing present. ↗

— Roger Lowenstein

#capitalist #warren-buffett #change

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#death-penalty #gandalf #j-r-r-tolkien #lord-of-the-rings #death

Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#crime #death #justice #punishment #death