Guglielmo Ferrero Quotes

A completely industrialized society is of no consequence to me.

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

America, which up to the arrival of the Europeans had but one cereal, maize, and but one domestic animal for labor, the llama, and we can rejoice that the Europeans imported with themselves and their tools the ox, the ass and the horse, corn, cotton, sugarcane, coffee and finally the vine and the orange tree, creating there a new world of that glorious society which produces merchandise and which with an extraordinary swiftness of movement has already traversed the two phases of the blackest slavery and the most democratic wage system.

I'm not happy exporting jobs but we must move ahead in technology and patents. I don't like losing any jobs but we'll see new opportunities created selling products there. We'll have a net increase in economic activity, just as we did with free trade. It's tempting to want to protect our markets and stay closed. But at some point it all comes crashing down and you're hopelessly left behind. Then you are Russia.

The War of 1812 has given new direction to wealth and industry in the United States, and manufacturers grew up as if by magic.

India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people's century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble.

We have no longer States that are necessarily only planting States. None are excluded from achieving that diversification of pursuits among the people which brings wealth and contentment.

The Middle East was once an economically advanced region of the world, as measured by standard of living, technology, agricultural productivity, literacy or institutiontopmeal creativity. Only China might have been even more developed. Subsequently, however, the Middle East failed to match the institutional transformation through which western Europe vastly increased its capacity to pool resources, coordinate productive activities and conduct exchanges.

For the first time since the 15th century, China is becoming a major economic power.

Over the last three decades, Mexico has made the transition from a commodity and agricultural-based economy to one dominated by manufacturing and services.

In transforming a backward agricultural China into an advanced industrialized country, we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate. So we must be good at learning.

Nearly every country in the world is now becoming industrialized as rapidly as it can.

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.

We all know that China is industrializing at a growth rate of 8 to 10 percent per year. China is on track to pass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 20 to 25 years, and China is determined to give its people a chance at this high standard of living that we enjoy.

The civilized world is far ahead of us. We have no choice but to catch up.

We have a few great engineers and mechanics, and a large body of clever workmen; but the Americans seem likely to become a whole nation of such people. Already, their rivers swarm with steamboats; their valleys are becoming crowded with factories; their towns, surpassing those of every state of Europe, except Belgium, Holland, and England, are the abodes of all the skill which now distinguishes a town population; and there is scarcely an art [occupation and craft] in Europe not carried on in America with equal or greater skill than in Europe, though it has been here cultivated and improved through ages.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draw all, even the most barbarian of nations into civilization.

[Reporting on America:] It's progressive growth ... before the century has elapsed will have changed the ... colonial system of the universe and the relative position of all civilized society.

Within a century or so after the discovery of America, more than fifty new foods had been carried back to the Old World, including maize, turkey, white potato, pumpkin, squash, the so-called Jerusalem artichoke, avocado, chocolate, and several kinds of beans. Potatoes and maize now rank second and third in total tonnage of the world's crops, behind rice but ahead of what is probably man's oldest cultivated grain, wheat.

It is impossible for any power to become eminent in commerce, without excelling in manufactures and navigation. America is capable of supporting and increasing both …

Without a consumer society there was no need for an industrial revolution.

America was not discovered. America was built.

Admirers of America on the contrary—and of these there are as many in Europe as there are detractors—will tell you that the New World is giving to the old a unique example of energy, activity, intelligence, and daring.

The Chinese and the Americans are great peoples. The Americans are optimistic, full of enterprising drive, down to earth, and innovative. In just over 200 years, they have turned the United States into the most developed country in the world, and made phenomenal achievements in economic development and science and technology.

The leading factor in the building of business America has been the ready means of communication between the states of the Union, unhampered, for one hundred and fifty years, by artificial barriers to trade. This has enabled us to build up the greatest home market the world has ever known.