Economic Development Quotes

In America, we happen to be living in a third world country from the point of view of economic and social development. I came back from New York yesterday and I took the fastest train in the country, the Acela. My wife and I took the New York-Boston train sixty years ago - it wasn't called the Acela then - and I think it's improved by about fifteen minutes since then. Any other country in the world would be about half the time. In fact when it's riding along the Connecticut turnpike it's barely keeping up with traffic, which is just scandalous.

Economics, not force of arms will decide; not battles, but famine.

My final aim is to bring Iran, within twenty years, to the same level of civilization and progress as will be enjoyed by the most highly developed countries. During the last ten years the degree of our backwardness has been halved, but it is this remaining backwardness which will be the most difficult to combat.

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.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

The dominant orthodoxy in development economics was that Third World countries were trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty that could be broken only by massive foreign aid from the more prosperous industrial nations of the world. This was in keeping with a more general vision on the Left that people were essentially divided into three categories - the heartless, the helpless, and wonderful people like themselves, who would rescue the helpless by playing Lady Bountiful with the taxpayers' money.

The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.

Albania has to demonstrate that it is willing to be a reliable partner in the international community.

No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.

Very large scale disasters, especially those that have occurred in the developing world, have very long recovery periods.

Demography, not democracy, will be the most critical factor for security and growth in the 21st century. Booming populations are a drag on developing countries, and low fertility rates are sapping growth in developed societies.

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

China has seen a great deal of economic progress. It's certainly rather of a miracle. The growing role of the market in the economy will force China to open up its political system over time and to move toward a more democratic society. So taken as a whole, the one real failure in this whole business has been Russia.

I don’t deny that Cuba poverty exists, but at least the peasants there have an illusion of progress, whereas the Bolivian lives without hope.

Especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately impacted tribal communities, we must invest in infrastructure in order to advance economic recovery and create much-needed jobs.

I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years' time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years' time we shall be ahead of the United States.

They have got as far as they can go, because they own their land in common .... there is no enterprise to make your home any better than that of your neighbors. There is no selfishness, which is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens ... they will not make much more progress.

We have worked nearly 30 years, but the lives of the Tibetans have not improved.

We cannot blame other people for our troubles. We are not victims of the influx of foreign people into South Africa. We must remember that it was mainly due to the aggressive and hostile policies of the apartheid regime that the economic development of our neighbours was undermined.

[We must] teach the advocates for an open trade the folly as well as degradation of their policy.

The real wealth of a nation resides in its farms and factories and the people who man them.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

Important reserves of natural resources, like petroleum and precious metals, are the bulwarks for laying the foundations for the future.

What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.

Because of poverty, we must adopt the capitalist means of production to develop our resources to get rich. However, if we ignore the issue of social justice at the beginning of China's industrialization, we will sow the seeds of class warfare in the future.