Robert Heilbroner Quotes

As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist

Marxism is what has seduced American liberals - well, liberals worldwide, communists, all leftists.

Marxism is not scientific: at the best, it has scientific prejudices.

Marxism is the opium of the Marxists.

Marxism: The theory that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic motive, that history is a science, a science of the search for food.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

Even though the society that Marx foresaw is far from being an historical reality, Marxism has penetrated so deeply in history that we are all Marxists, one way or another, even unknowingly.

Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

The communism of Karl Marx would probably be actually the best for everybody as a whole. But what he didn't figure into was human nature, and that's what corrupts it.

The doctrines of Karl Marx are a destroyer of all mortals.

Marxism does not make sense, and I am the first one to say this

I am still moved by passages of Marx: the 'Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right,' for example, where, after the famous line about religion being 'the opium of the people,' he goes on to call it 'the heart of a heartless world.'

[Marx's theories] gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did.

I actually did trouble to read Marx first hand. I found it illuminating in so many ways; in particular, my perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live was irreversibly altered.

We turn to Marx, therefore, not because he is infallible, but because he is inescapable.

In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of 'reason' as single sources of authority.

For [Karl] Marx what counts is man. He is the root of everything;while for capitalism, the aim are things, profit, and man is only a means to gain them. As an authentically religious individual, Marx could not be other than against "religion".

Marx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx.

I would say I was still a Marxist - which is not to be confused with being a Communist. Despite its flaws, Marxism still seems to explain the material world better than anything else.

Something that's seldom appreciated about me is that I am in sympathy with a great deal of what Marx wrote, except that I'm on the side of the bourgeoisie.

Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations.

Marxists have some way of analyzing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be.

If people don't like Marxism, they should blame the British Museum.

The important part of Marxism was its demand for active, constant, practical, class-war.

Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist.