Allan H. Meltzer Quotes

Anybody who knows about capitalism knows that bankruptcy is an essential part of capitalism.

Capitalism, after all, is no fun when real failure becomes a possibility.

The idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.

When I think about capitalism, I think about all the small businesses that were started because we have the opportunity and the freedom in America for people to do that and to make a good living for themselves and their families. And I don't think we should confuse what we have to do every so often in America, which is save capitalism from itself.

Capitalism demands the best of every man - his rationality - and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.

The superior freedom of the capitalist system, its superior justice, and its superior productivity are not three superiorities, but one. The justice follows from the freedom and the productivity follows from the freedom and the justice.

Capitalism started out with a noble and high motive, but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against.

The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.

Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at.

Failure is a big part of a free market's success. People fail to live up to their potential, or to carry out all their good intentions, in all kinds of economic and political systems. Capitalism makes them pay a price for their failures, while socialism, feudalism, fascism and other systems enable personal failures, especially by those at the top, to be ignored.

I'm not a Communist. I'm an American. I'm a capitalist. I mean, I'm not a very good capitalist, myself. I'm not very good at it, but it's not that I'm not for capitalism. But people who believe in things like corporate citizenship, it's idiotic. I mean, it shows you're an idiot.

The market economy-capitalism-is a social system of consumers' supremacy.

Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries.

Capitalism gives all of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and hang on to it.

All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out

Capitalism is an art form.

I certainly think the free-market has failed.

Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man's well-being is not their goal.

Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.

Capitalism is the greatest system ever created for alleviating general human misery, and yet it breeds ingratitude.

Every time I say the word capitalism, everyone just assumes I have plenty of Marxism in me, I do. But Russia and China had their bloody revolutions and even while they were Communist, they had the same idea about generating wealth - tear it out of the bowels of the earth. And now they have come out with the same idea in the end... you know, capitalism. But capitalism will fail, too.

Capitalism, the ogre of those protesting Wall Street, has suffered a public relations crisis in the wake of the global economic collapse. But any remedy to the systemic corruption that led to the collapse should not displace recognition that capitalism creates wealth. Capitalism, and no other economic system, has raised millions from poverty around the world.

Capitalism sounds good in theory but it just doesn't work.

Profit margins are probably the most mean-reverting series in finance, and if profit margins do not mean-revert, then something has gone badly wrong with capitalism. If high profits do not attract competition, there is something wrong with the system and it is not functioning properly.

The development of capitalism consists in everyone having the right to serve the consumer better or more cheaply.