Joseph Sobran Quotes

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.

The left hates capitalism, not because of freedom and liberty - although they do. But the primary they hate capitalism is that it is the most efficient engine to create wealth for the greatest number of people in a society that has ever been devised. Nobody's ever claimed it's perfect. Nobody's ever said it's flawless. But it's better than anything else out there, particularly anything left has to offer.

I am a strong believer in the free market. I am a strong believer in capitalism. But, I am also a strong believer that there are certain common goods - our air, our water, making sure that people are safe - that require to have some regulation.

The welfare state is institutionalized crime - 'organized plunder,' as the French economist Frederic Bastiat called it. It systematizes what is intrinsically wrong: forcing some people to support others. The Democrats favor the indefinite expansion of the welfare state, perpetually increasing the ratio of force to freedom in society.

Free market capitalism has done more for the soul of the human race than any other system. And it's created the highest standard of living.

Political freedom can be inimical to economic freedom.

This system, built on free markets, free trade and free peoples and American protection, that's what got us from the end of World War II to the extraordinary events of the end of the Cold War and a system that was one of prosperity and peace for a lot of people, including for the United States.

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.

Economics and politics are so intertwined and interlinked that politics now, mainstream politics, extreme center politics, are little else but a version of concentrated economics. And this means that any alternative - alternative capitalism, left Keynesianism, intervention by the state to help the poor, rolling back the privatizations - becomes a huge issue. The entire weight of the extreme center and its media is turned against it, which in reality now is beginning to harm democracy.

By definition, the moment one crosses from center to left, one accepts more government control of people's lives. Therefore, the further left society moves, the more there is government control over its citizens' lives. It is astonishing that this obvious fact is not universally acknowledged and that the Left has somehow successfully portrayed itself as preoccupied with personal liberty.

In conditions of private property ... "life-activity" stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.

My analysis, especially of the computer revolution, always comes back to capitalism. It's that economic system that has led to Western civilization's willingness to enslave ourselves to machines - because some people benefit enormously from it, while the costs are borne by other people and the planet.

I think things that contribute to the destruction of our free-incentive system are wrong. A trend against that free-incentive system is wrong, and should only be temporarily engaged in, in the event that war or something of that kind requires it. Otherwise, it should be reduced.

Capitalism has never stood back and examined itself properly. I think everybody knows that capitalism is the only thing that works, but is the current form of capitalism the best way of it working?

Capitalism has made it this way, old fashioned fascism will take it away.

The so-called liberals of today have the very popular idea that freedom of speech, of thought, of the press, freedom of religion, freedom from imprisonment without trial-that all these freedoms can be preserved in the absence of what is called economic freedom. They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.

Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.

It is not uncommon to suppose that the free exchange of property in markets and capitalism are one and the same. They are not. While capitalism operates through the free market, free markets don't require capitalism.

Capitalism has been called nationalistic - yet it is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace.

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine.

Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.

Capitalism means that a few people will do very well, and the rest will serve the few.

The power of the State must be invoked for restoring economic freedom just as it has been invoked for destroying economic freedom.

It is no accident that wherever the State ha taken economic decision away from the citizen, it has deprived him of his other liberties as well.

Capitalism can be helpful, but it can also be destructive when it's used by huge enterprises worldwide for the sale of weapons.