Terry Eagleton Quotes

I don't think capitalism can survive.

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.

Capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions, moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible.

Can capitalism survive? No. I do not think it can.

It’s hard to be a fan of the free market these days when the free market has just driven the economy over the cliff.

This capitalist society has not lasted forever; it's only a few hundred years old.

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.

Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful of rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of people and then walk off with the money?

The crisis is the price for the capitalist system

I've said for thirty years that capitalism is an exhausted system. But now you can see the handwriting everywhere. And one especially horrifying part is the fiscal crisis.

Capitalism has survived communism. Now, it eats away at itself.

Capitalism is in crisis.

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.

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..

From time to time, capitalism has a tendency to implode.

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction.

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?

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

American capitalism has been both overpraised and overindicted. It is neither the Plumed Knight nor the monstrous Robber Baron.

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.

Capitalism is a great idea in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work.

America is America. It's a capitalist system. They [leaders] have enshrined that belief that profit matters more than anything else. The polarization of the society is just the resurfacing of that.

You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.