Chris Patten Quotes

I've never been antiregulation. I've always believed that raw, unregulated capitalism doesn't work.

I argue that one of the functions of a capitalist state is to defend capitalism from itself, to defend capitalism from the capitalists.

The people were told in the last campaign that trusts [corporate monopolies] were a natural evolution, and that the only way to deal with them was to regulate them. The people are tired of being told such things. What they want is the kind of opportunity that formerly existed in this country.

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

In 21st century America, capitalism has been unfettered from the regulations that democratized it and made it serve society.

I believed - and believe - that capitalism works best for a freedom-loving society, that it brings more prosperity to more people than any other social-economic system, but that somehow we have to take care of people.

Once the tentacles of redistributionism wrap themselves tightly around every part of the economy - and around our psyches - they can never be unwound.

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

The Sherman Act is similar in the economics sphere to the Bill of Rights in the personal sphere.

Capitalism has its weaknesses. But it is capitalism that ended the stranglehold of the hereditary aristocracies, raised the standard of living for most of the world and enabled the emancipation of women.

The New Deal's enmity for that system of free and competitive private enterprise which we call capitalism was fundamental.

In a pure capitalist system, an institution as moronic and corrupt as Bank of America would be swiftly punished by the market - the executives would get to loot their own firms once, then they'd be looking for jobs again.

In this view, the role of the great majority of Americans is simply to buy the products produced, work happily for their wages, and leave all of the significant economic decisions to the capitalists.

The market is no god - it cannot solve every problem.

I'm not denying that monopolies are terrible things, but I am denying that it is readily easy to resolve them through legislation of that nature.

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.

I’m a big fan of the free market system but the free market system works [only] when you have robust competition.

There can be no liberty for man save in the social appropriation of private capital.

The executive [President] could have saved the people from the appalling conditions which confront us today, if all the power of this government had been put forth to enforce the [Sherman] Anti-Trust law.

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..

There is an unbroken chain of opposition to the introduction of economic freedom and to the capitalist autonomy of the economic sphere. ...In every case the opposition could only be overcome--peacefully or by force--because of the promise of capitalism to establish equality. ...That this promise was an illusion we all know

Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.

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.