Walther Rathenau Quotes

Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.

The so-called oligarchs have always had less influence than conventional wisdom attributed to them.

Power naturally and necessarily follows property.

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

That's not to say they [Bill and Hillary Clinton] intend to be corrupt, but I think they're way too cozy with the economic elite, and we know that our political system exemplifies the power of the economic elite.

Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves.

Whoever owns the means of credit controls the industrial life of the nation.

… a union of power in the same hands over industry, commerce and finance, with a resulting power over public affairs.

Wherever the dominant culture is, that’s where the money goes.

Fundamentally all social and political questions are economic.

... corporate power ... is not only economic—the ability to set prices without regard to market pressures or to manipulate consumer demand. It is also political—the ability to use the public government to obtain private economic goals. Corporate power means the ability of big corporations to have more than their fair share of influence over the decisions of government.

…empire follows the balance of property, whether lodged in one, a few, or many hands.

The landed men are the true owners of our political vessel, the moneyed men are no more than passengers in it.

The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.

I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the banks can and do create money. And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hand the destiny of the people

The will of the capitalist is certainly to take as much as possible. What we have to do is not to talk about his will, but to enquire about his power, the limits of that power, and the character of those limits.

I have always looked at the world through the prism of money to some degree. If you could follow the money, it explains a lot of things, in all sorts of aspects of the world. You can look at politics through the prism of money. You can look at art through the prism of money. You can look at sports through the prism of money.

Some of the people in finance touch enormous parts of the economy.

If you want to understand why something is happening in America just follow the money.

Whosoever has money has power. It's not about a label. If you have money tomorrow, you will be powerful.

We all - even at a base level, even a Republican - understand that the people with the money are the ones with the power. We all learn that.

Economics runs the world.

The only way to gain the kinds of often-generational wealth that the 1% has been able to gain is through controlling the populations it relied on to make its wealth.

Those who want to "spread the wealth" almost invariably seek to concentrate the power. It happens too often, and in too many different countries around the world, to be a coincidence. Which is more dangerous, inequalities of wealth or concentrations of power?

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.