#capitalism

What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again. ↗

— Inga Muscio

#lies #politics #power #wisdom #independence

This is the postmodern desert inhabited by people who are, in effect, consuming themselves in the form of images and abstractions through which their desires, sense of identity, and memories are replicated and then sold back to them as products ↗

— Larry McCaffrey

#consumerism #identity #memory #postmodernism #capitalism

Capitalism means that a few people will do very well, and the rest will serve the few. ↗

— Michael Moore

#capitalism

It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. ↗

— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

#capitalism

The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#capitalism #ownership #capitalism

When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty. ↗

— Naomi Klein

#capitalism

Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#material #pleasure #stuff #capitalism

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest. ↗

— Leo Tolstoy

#capitalism #dishonest #hierarchy #honest #labor

The parties with the most gain never show up on the battlefield. ↗

— Naomi Klein

#war #capitalism

To get rich, one must have but a single idea, one fixed, hard, immutable thought: the desire to make a heap of gold. And in order to increase this heap of gold, one must be inflexible, a usurer, thief, extortionist, and murderer! And one must especially mistreat the small and the weak! And when this mountain of gold has been amassed, one can climb up on it, and from up on the summit, a smile on one’s lips, one can contemplate the valley of poor wretches that one has created. ↗

— Petrus Borel

#poverty #rich #wealth #capitalism