Douglas Tompkins Quotes

Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction.

The hour of capitalism’s greatest triumph is its greatest danger.

You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.

The guiding principle is not to manufacture the goods everyone needs, rather to earn profits for a few capitalists.

We cannot remove the evils of capitalism without taking its source of power: ownership.

As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These “humanitarian parts” are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its “antirent and anticapital parts,” means to get rid of the poodle..

Present day American capitalism—for all our misgivings about it—at least leaves room for free institutions to flower and survive.

Capitalism is, fundamentally, an economic system that promotes inequality.

Right now people seem to be very tentative about the positive benefits of capitalism.

What if capitalism is unsustainable, and socialism is impossible?

I mean, the country was founded on free enterprise. There's good things about it, and there's obviously bad things about it.

I'm not a communist, of course. But I do think that everything is down to economics. Capitalism doesn't change.

The trouble with the profit system has always been that it was highly unprofitable to most people.

A Socialist Government cannot carry on a capitalist system better than the capitalists. The men bred by a capitalist system are men of affairs who understand their business. They are not apprentices.

The substance of the eminent Socialist gentleman's speech is that making a profit is a sin, but it is my belief that the real sin is taking a loss.

The capitalist process shapes things and souls for socialism.

Capitalism with airbags—the type of capitalism I am a fan of.

When capitalism changes, so must socialism.

Controlling capitalism has proved far more difficult than controlling anything else, because capitalism is based on the control of the many by the few—the reverse of the conventional definition of political democracy.

… conservatives are ideologically committed to capitalism, and do not object to being guided by market signals, while socialists have had to accept, often unwittingly, that capitalist prosperity is an indispensable condition for social welfare and working-class well-being.

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

Clearly the tenets of capitalism are deeply and fundamentally misunderstood… At the same time that young people are rejecting capitalism and free markets, they celebrate entrepreneurs and free enterprise. This disconnect is at best confusing; at worst it’s troubling.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

But I do have one real problem with socialism: I like money.