Jonathan Franzen Quotes

There's a big battle going on in the country in regards to capitalism and socialism, and it's a debate that deserves attention.

Since the end of the 1970s, free-market capitalism has been in, and socialism has been out.

We either go one direction, left, which would be socialism. Or right, which would be people trying to make the money themselves.

The wild open-market theory that died in 1929 had a run of just over thirty years. Communism, a complete melding of religious, economic, and global theories, stretched to seventy years in Russia and forty-five years in central Europe, thanks precisely to the intensive use of military and police force.

When people are desperate or wealthy, they turn to socialism; only when they have no other alternative do they embrace the free market. After all, lies about guaranteed security are far more seductive than lectures about personal responsibility.

In government-directed economies, the collective takes priority over the individual. The moral ideal is equal results. That approach could not be further removed from the real world.

Socialism ruins societies because it misunderstands human nature.

If you aren't talking to your kids about socialism, someone else is. So use car time, dinner time, tax preparation time, and time spent together at your work or small business to teach your child about the virtues of capitalism, the system of government that has lifted more people out of poverty.

Socialism doesn't work. A big government doesn't work.

Ultimately, and I believe this is one of the fundamental problems with socialism, it's that human beings do have self-interest. It's very hard to ignore that self-interest when you're creating a government structure.

'Bernie versus Bernie,' for me, is these two extremes of capitalism. It's Bernie Sanders, the ultimate socialist, and Bernie Madoff, the ultimate capitalist.

The time has come for everybody -capitalists, communists, socialists- to ask themselves what 'civilization' really means. If not, whether a country calls itself capitalist or communists, in the pursuit of 'progress' , it will visit genocide either on its own people or on another people whose country must be plundered for resources to feed the Progress industry.

Socialism constitutes a threat to the present and future welfare of the human race, in the sense that neither socialism nor any other known substitute for the market order could sustain the current population of the world.

Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor.

Capitalism works. In the end, socialism imploded on itself. Communism imploded on itself. Ultimately jihadism will implode on itself, if we stay in the fight and stay on offense because failed philosophies don't work, there's no future.

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.

True American Liberalism utterly denies the whole creed of socialism.

The basic principles of democracy should be observed whatever the country - principles such as civil liberties, a free market, a free press, the priority of the individual over mythical state interests, a state which serves the interests of ordinary people and defends their rights and interests. This is all easy to say but hard to make reality.

We Americans really seem to be the only truly non-socialist economy on earth.

The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.

Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.

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.

What is the most effective, practical way of raising the wealth of nations? What causes wealth? I have come to think that the dream of democratic socialism is inferior to the dream of democratic capitalism, and that the latter's superiority in actual practice is undeniable.

Bear in mind that capitalism is a tiny period of human society. You never really had capitalism, you always had one or another variant of state capitalism.

Less than seventy-five years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won.