Political Economy Quotes

#1. As in the instances of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has a plausible idea at the root of it.

John Ruskin

#2. Too often capitalism appears as a synonym for market exchange and not as a political economy that dictated who worked where, on what terms, and to whose benefit.

Seth Rockman

#3. The prevailing ideology of the modern west - which is political economy - is in the doghouse. Having failed to notice atmospheric pollution, the economists then frightened themselves with the sort of financial crisis they said they had abolished.

James Buchan

#4. Basically political economy - that you have to look at how funding structures shape the media landscape. You have to look at commercial interests, consolidation - the economy structures are experience.

Astra Taylor

#5. Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive.

Leland Stanford

#6. The science of political economy is essentially practical, and applicable to the common business of human life. There are few branches of human knowledge where false views may do more harm, or just views more good.

Thomas Malthus

#7. We must abandon definitely the laissez-faire theory of political economy, and fearlessly champion a system of increased Governmental control, paying no heed to the cries of the worthy people who denounce this as Socialistic.

Theodore Roosevelt

#8. From my earliest acquaintance with the science of political economy, it has been evident to my mind that capital was the product of labor, and that therefore, in its best analysis there could be no natural conflict between capital and labor.

Leland Stanford

#9. It is only the novice in political economy who thinks it is the duty of government to make its citizens happy - government has no such office.

Walt Whitman

#10. The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism .

David Harvey

#11. Political Economy means that everybody except politicians must be economical.

G.K. Chesterton

#12. Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know, said Mr. Brooke,

George Eliot

#13. If men understood domestic economy half as well as women do, then their political economy and their entire consequent statecraft would not be the futil muddle which it is.

James Stephens

#14. Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

C. Wright Mills

#15. I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his other writings.

Richard Cobden

#16. Our object in these remarks has been not only to account for the slow progress which has as yet been made by Political Economy, and to suggest means by which its advancement may be accelerated, but also to warn the reader of the nature of the following Treatise.

Nassau William Senior

#17. It has been said, and perhaps with truth, that the conclusions of Political Economy partake more of the certainty of the stricter sciences than those of most of the other branches of human knowledge.

Thomas Malthus

#18. There are no doubts that, the situation in the country today, indicates that there is much more work to do in the process of reforming the political economy and improving the quality of life of our people and communities.

Ibrahim Babangida

#19. I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes.

Robert Peel

#20. Self-preservation and self-denial: the basis of all political economy.

Lord Acton

#21. Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.

Friedrich Engels

#22. Wherefore it is impossible to succeed in comparing wealth of different eras or different nations. This, in political economy, like squaring the circle in mathematics, is impracticable, for want of a common mean or measure to go by.

Jean-Baptiste Say

#23. The best political economy is the care and culture of men; for, in these crises, all are ruined except such as are proper individuals, capable of thought, and of new choice and the application of their talent to new labor.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#24. I know I can be accused of sacrilege in writing about political economy in the style of a novel about love or pirates. But I confess I get a pain from reading valuable works by certain sociologists, political experts, economists and historians who write in code.

Eduardo Galeano

#25. The National Debt is a very Good Thing and it would be dangerous to pay it off for fear of Political Economy.

W.C. Sellar

#26. Political economy has disapproved equally of monopoly and communism in the various branches of human activity, wherever it has found them. Is it not then strange and unreasonable that it accepts them in the security industry?

Gustave De Molinari

#27. The principles of political economy have elevated the working class above the place they ever filled before.

Richard Cobden

#28. Political economy is the science of free society. Its theory and its history alike establish this position. Its fundamental maxims, Laissez-faire and 'Pas trop gouverner' are at war with all kinds of slavery, for they in fact assert that individuals and peoples prosper most when governed least.

George Fitzhugh

#29. Don't make a novel to establish a principle of political economy. You will spoil both.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#30. Persons, with big wigs many of them and austere aspect, whom I take to be Professors of the Dismal Science ...
Coining "Dismal Science" as a nickname for Political Economy

Thomas Carlyle

#31. Among minor alterations, I may mention the substitution for the name political economy of the single convenient term economics. I cannot help thinking that it would be well to discard, as quickly as possible, the old troublesome double-worded name of our science.

William Stanley Jevons

#32. The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.

James Buchan

#33. He who attempts to draw any conclusion whatever as to the nation's wealth or poverty from the mere fact of a favorable or unfavorable Balance of Trade, has not grasped the first fundamental principle of Political Economy.

Ernst Engel

#34. The primary social goal of both systems of political economy is for middle-aged men to attract good-looking younger women. Democratic capitalists believe that good-looking younger women are attracted mainly by money. Social democratic capitalists believe that they are attracted mainly by power.

Gary North

#35. Political economy regards the proletarian like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle.

Karl Marx

#36. A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption.

Thomas Jefferson

#37. It is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis... If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this: concern for the future, for those who will come after us.

Max Weber

#38. The confounding Political Economy with the Sciences and Arts to which it is subservient, has been one of the principal obstacles to its improvement.

Nassau William Senior

#39. The parallel existence and mutual interaction of "state" and "market" in the modern world create "political economy"; without both state and market there could be no political economy.

Robert Gilpin

#40. [Louis] Brandeis had a very distinctive vision of political economy that he persuaded Woodrow Wilson to adopt in the 1912 election and that he largely enacted from the bench.

Jeffrey Rosen

#41. The opposing tendencies of concentration and spread are of little consequence in the liberal model of political economy.

Robert Gilpin

#42. Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind.

John Stuart Mill

#43. It's called political economy because it is has nothing to do with either politics or economy.

Stephen Leacock

#44. Political Economy, in truth, has never pretended to give advice to mankind with no lights but its own; though people who knew nothing but political economy (and therefore knew it ill) have taken upon themselves to advise, and could only do so by such lights as they had.

John Stuart Mill

#45. Political economy has only become a science since it has been confined to the results of inductive investigation.

Jean-Baptiste Say

#46. Recognize that good economics cannot be divorced from good politics: this is perhaps a reason why the field of economics was known as political economy.

Anonymous

#47. There are a multitude of allied branches of knowledge connected with mans condition; the relation of these to political economy is analogous to the connexion of mechanics, astronomy, optics, sound, heat, and every other branch more or less of physical science, with pure mathematics.

William Stanley Jevons

#48. Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.

Alfred Marshall

#49. I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.

Fidel Castro

#50. We propose in the following Treatise to give an outline of the Science which treats of the Nature, the Production, and the Distribution of Wealth. To that Science we give the name of Political Economy.

Nassau William Senior

#51. Quite apart from our desire to avoid destroying the planet or economic meltdown, I offer another reason to position cooperation at the heart of our political economy: it will mean we are more likely to live sane, fruitful lives

Oliver James

#52. All those who, since Adam Smith, have turned their attention to Political Economy, agree that in reality we do not buy articles of consumption with money, the circulating medium with which we pay for them. We must in the first instance have bought this money itself by the sale of our produce.

Jean-Baptiste Say

#53. A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who haven't even read it are dying because the ones who did haven't got the joke.

Terry Pratchett

#54. Some writers maintain arithmetic to be only the only sure guide in political economy; for my part, I see so many detestable systems built upon arithmetical statements, that I am rather inclined to regard that science as the instrument of national calamity.

Jean-Baptiste Say

#55. The opinions that the price of commodities depends solely on the proportion of supply and demand, or demand to supply, has become almost an axiom in political economy, and has been the source of much error in that science.

David Ricardo

#56. The classic formulation of the materialist conception of history is that of the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, written in 1859.

Anonymous

#57. Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

Herbert Marcuse

#58. Peace is nothing more than the regulation of the psycho-political economy of awe and reverential fear, of using the threat of terror in order to bind citizens to the circuit of their subjection.

Simon Critchley

#59. I say political economy; you say - worse. I say socialism: worse. Education: worse.

Anton Chekhov

#60. Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Ronald Reagan

#61. There'll be a growing disparity between economics and politics. An economy that grows so rapidly is intractably global. On the other hand, the current political system is intractably national. So there is a growing dichotomy between a global economy and locally based politics.

Walter Wriston

#62. When people believe that the local government and economy serve their needs. There is little desire to protest.

Auliq Ice

#63. Poverty is a symptom - of the absence of a workable economy built on credible political, social, and legal institutions.

Steven D. Levitt

#64. This tough-love, winner-take-all narrative dominating policymaking is far too limited a way to think about how a complex, modern, diverse economy like ours expands and thrives. The strongest periods of economic growth in the 20th century were also times when incomes rose across the board.

John Podesta

#65. Politicians and bureaucrats are substituting their uninformed, largely political decisions for those of the marketplace. Their past miscalculations demonstrate that they do not and cannot possess the information, knowledge, means, and discipline to manage the economy.

Mark Levin

#66. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans' anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed.

Frank Rich

#67. The political system is broken, the economy is broken and so is society. That is why people are so depressed about the state of our country.

David Cameron

#68. A totalitarian regime thus has one political party, one educational system, one artistic creed, one centrally planned economy, one unified media, and one moral code. In a totalitarian state there are no independent schools, no private businesses, no grassroots organizations, and no critical thought.

Anne Applebaum

#69. The weak economy, widening income inequality, gridlock in Congress and a presidential election: Those were perhaps the dominant economic and political themes of 2012.

Steven Rattner

#70. We believe a renewed commitment to limited government will unshackle our economy and create millions of new jobs and opportunities for all people, of every background, to succeed and prosper. Under this approach, the spirit of initiative - not political clout - determines who succeeds.

Paul Ryan

#71. In every capitalist economy there are anti-capitalist movements, activists, and even political parties; in a way, that there are no longer anti-democratic movements, activists, and parties.

Geoff Mulgan

#72. As you see the political problems are closely connected with the economical problems. With the help of politics, we will open the way for the economy and this is why all these problems are included in the program of the newly elected government.

Ibrahim Rugova

#73. I think that the world has largely ignored Belize and the political situation and the plight of its people because it's one of the smallest countries and, in terms of the world economy, one of the least significant.

John McAfee

#74. A free economy is as essential to society as democratic political institutions. A strong market-based economy is the fertile ground for democratic freedoms that we think are important.

Lee R. Raymond

#75. any form of expression that ceases to be an experience and becomes an art form loses its glowing divinity

Jo M. Sekimonyo

#76. Today, more than ever, we need political leaders who can see the big picture, who understand the relationship between the economy and its environmental support systems.

Lester R. Brown

#77. I'm so moved when I see everyday Americans standing together, against all odds, to make their lives and communities better - whether it's organizing against big factories polluting their air or against big banks corrupting our economy and political system.

Sally Kohn

#78. Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services.

Pope John Paul II

#79. Community colleges are popular among political leaders of both parties. But because of the lack of funding and a lack of direction, they have lost their critical edge in preparing workers for a 21st-century economy.

Nina Easton

#80. We need scientists and mathematicians explaining why they are excited about their subjects but also why they are important for solving social problems, informing political debate and for the economy.

Marcus Du Sautoy

#81. Among the most urgent political priorities of our age is the separation of economy and state.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#82. China today has the economy of a twenty-first-century economic superpower with a political regime little changed since the 1950s. Is this slow evolution in political institutions down to the concentration or the dispersion of power?

Matt Ridley

#83. Between the disillusionment that people feel about politics-as-usual, assaults on the right to vote, and the constant feelings of pressure that Americans suffer in our overworked, overstressed economy, too many people have checked out of the political process.

Annie Leonard

#84. We've clearly seen that Tea Party Republicans are willing to take our economy hostage just to score political points, but I'm not willing to do that.

Martin Heinrich

#85. Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics. Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy.

Thomas Sowell

#86. A military base in a country like Afghanistan is also a web of relationships, a hub for the local economy, and a key player in the political ecosystem.

Anand Gopal

#87. You want a political culture that works to create conditions under which an economy can thrive? Since signing the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, Israel has spent two decades working to unshackle its economy from its socialist roots, with remarkable results.

John Podhoretz

#88. It's become glib political conventional wisdom in Washington that a massive spending plan will provide a parachute rescue for a cliff-diving economy - landing it safely and with strong enough legs to move toward a healthy future.

Nina Easton

#89. It isn't enough just to scream at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. We need our political system to start reflect this anger back into, 'How do we fix it? How do we get the economy going again?'

Colin Powell

#90. The minimum wage has not kept pace with rising costs. This legislation is overdue and will help families that are struggling in this harsh economy.

Jerry Brown

#91. As soon as the economic freedom which the market economy grants to its members is removed, all political liberties and bills of rights become humbug.

Ludwig Von Mises

#92. I think a lot of concern of the people in the north is that one hears constant reports in talking to them is about militarisation and the presence of the army, the entry of the army into civic life, into the economy, the lack of a political settlement.

Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu

#93. The inefficiency of political control of an economy has been demonstrated more often, in more places, and under more varied conditions, than almost anything outside the realm of pure science.

Thomas Sowell

#94. If the economy can only provide a diminishing political dividend, Chinese leaders will encourage their people to feel pride and vigor in other ways.

Evan Osnos

#95. Both sides of the political spectrum must one day realize that limitless government intrusion in the economy, in our personal lives, and in the affairs of other nations cannot serve the best interests of America.

Ron Paul

#96. The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world.

Ludwig Von Mises

#97. The coal industry is an even larger part of the Australian economy than it is of the American, and it has an enormous amount of political power.

Jeff Goodell

#98. I think the research evidence on the benefits of early childhood programs for the local economy is extremely strong. However, the moral and political choice is still up to us, as citizens and as voters.

Timothy J. Bartik

#99. War challenges virtually every other institution of society - the justice and equity of its economy, the adequacy of its political systems, the energy of its productive plant, the bases, wisdom and purposes of its foreign policy.

Walter Millis

#100. I believe - I'm not a political expert, but I believe there is a broad consensus, a middle ground if you will, that Democrats and Republicans, business people and workers can agree on, to get this - the economy growing faster, getting people back to work.

Austan Goolsbee