Woodrow Wilson Quotes

I guess the Reagan era is defined as the 'I want it all for me, and screw everybody else' era.

The school of laissez faire, of which you seem to be a pronounced advocate, has produced great men in advocating the theory of each for himself, and his Satanic Majesty taking the hindermost

For the exploitation of human greed, they have devised comparison and competition. Right from childhood on, we are indoctrinated to compare and compete, and there is a word, a phrase: 'free and fair competition.'

Selsdon Man is designing a system of society for the ruthlessness and the pushing, the uncaring. His message to the rest is: you're out on your own.

With a group of bankers I always had the feeling that success was measured by the extent one gave nothing away.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just greedy, and consumers are just consuming for the sake of their own greed.

When it comes to rapacious 19th century capitalism, my family's hands are clean.

The kind of society which we still have is maybe, in some cases, getting worse. Competition is becoming a virtue. Intense competition drives people to go more and more into self-interest. Even to see other folks as competition.

The ideology and practice of individual acquisition, accumulation and concentration are now ascendant

Capital is good; the capitalist is a helper if he is not also a monopolist. We can safely let any one get as rich as he can if he will not despoil others in doing so.

War between the proletariat and the capitalist for their respective shares in the produce; on one side, wages, on the other, profits; each side exerting itself to carry off a maximum. Man becomes a wolf for his fellow-man. It is a question of eating one’s brother or being eaten by him. War between workers and workers for the sharing of wages. War between capitalists and capitalists for the sharing of profits.

Economic Man faces a merciless world alone and unaided, his hand against every other's.

After I asked him [a student] what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement. No decent society can tolerate that definition.

I think so much of neoliberalism and capitalism has caused people to live in a state of greed, fear and consumption that is covering up so much of what we really want.

The predominant idea behind globalization, in its most virulent form, is an unpleasant kind of social Darwinism - that the world is for winners not losers, that only the successful count, that money is considerably more important than votes.

The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life.

There is a lack of collective support or social support for working people in America. We're told, "You can be, as an individual, anything you want to be, but it must be at something else's - or somebody else's - expense."

Renounce all those material things that you gained by exploiting other human beings.

The scientific world, the materialistic world, the world of commerce, the world of business, the world of individualism, the world of capitalism, world of communism - all these worlds are the old story now. Where we think we exploit nature, we exploit people. Market rules, profit rules, money rules. We work for name, fame, power, money, profit. That's the old story.

Let's suppose we all just materialized on Earth and there was a bunch of potatoes on the ground, okay? There's just six of us. Only six humans. We come into a clearing and there's potatoes on the ground. Now, my instinct would be, let's everybody get some potatoes. "Everybody got a potato? Joey didn't get a potato! He's small, he can't hold as many potatoes. Give Joey some of your potatoes." "No, these are my potatoes!" That's the Republicans. "I collected more of them, I got a bigger pile of potatoes, they're mine. If you want some of them, you're going to have to give me something."

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies and cuts through to the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker.

I think that money is the root of all evil. I've seen it happen.

There is a number among us, young and old, of all sorts almost among us, that swarm up and down towns, and woods, and fields, whose care and work hitherto hath been like bees, only to get honey to their own hive.