In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Socialism is the same as Communism, only better English.

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukaemia with leeches.

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.

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating… because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.

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

Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property, and the division of the resultant public income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population.

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

At times, I’ve referred to Christ’s miracles, and have said, ‚Well, Christ multiplied the fish and the loaves to feed the people. That is precisely what we want to do with the Revolution and socialism.‘

The highly functional infrastructure that surrounds us, particularly in the West, is a gift from our ancestors: the comparatively uncorrupt political and economic systems, the technology, the wealth, the lifespan, the freedom, the luxury, and the opportunity.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

Well, Marx is having a comeback. I hear him mentioned a lot in terms of the global financial situation and the general sense of injustice out there. A lot of economic experts in America refer to him without actually using the M word, but he’s around.

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.

Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!

From 1945 to 1974, the Western world – including America – was more socialistic than capitalistic, more pro-labor than pro-business.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Whole new businesses will emerge around breakthrough products as revolutionary technologies accelerate capitalism’s creative destruction of slower industries.

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Those who invest in South Africa should not think they are doing us a favor; they are here for what they get out of our cheap and abundant labor, and they should know that they are buttressing one of the most vicious systems.

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn’t do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell.

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

Capitalism has proven to be the only system that works, but the problem with capitalism is that extreme wealth ends up in the hands of a few people.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

A true capitalist doesn’t have a job, because other people and other people’s money work for them.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Democracy is the road to socialism.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.

The environmentalists say capitalism is killing our oceans, air, land, and forests. Capitalists argue that they provide food, fuel, and building materials for a growing world.

The rise in the price of gold is a sign that capitalism has stumbled.

I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

I would remind you the lesser of two socialists is still a socialist.

I could become very rich in Guatemala but by the low method of ratifying my title, opening a clinic, and specialising in allergies. To do that would be the most horrible betrayal of the two ‚I’s‘ struggling inside me: the socialist and the traveller.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.