The Essential Guide to
Capitalism
A Treasury of Quotes on the Subject
EXPANDING THE MARKETPLACE
OF IDEAS
The Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism
is America’s first and only university-based research
and teaching center dedicated to exploring the
moral, legal, political, and economic foundations of
capitalism.
The Clemson Institute was founded in 2005 to
educate a new generation of students about the moral
requirements of a free society.
With the support of some of the world’s most
distinguished scholars, the Clemson Institute
is working to change the intellectual culture
through public-policy research, teaching, and
educational outreach.
C. Bradley Thompson
Executive Director, BB&T Research Professor
clemson.edu/capitalism
BUILDING our FOUNDATION
“I believe totally in a capitalist system. I only wish
that someone would try it.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
America’s economic system and its successes have
been traditionally identified with capitalism. However,
despite capitalism’s remarkable track record, it’s not
an easy time to be an advocate for it. The business
leaders who keep our country growing are often
denounced as “greedy” or “selfish” for creating the
wealth that has allowed the United States to become
the most prosperous nation in the history of the world.
The Clemson Institute celebrates businessmen as
heroes, recognizing the enormous significance of their
contributions. Our academic programs will equip
advocates to defend the moral right of businessmen to
produce, trade and profit from their activities without
government interference.
This booklet is a resource of valuable insights on
capitalism from some of its greatest spokesmen. We
hope it will stimulate a world-class conversation on
the nature and meaning of capitalism.
ONE / WHAT CAPITALISM IS
Ayn Rand
“Competition is merely the absence of
oppression.”
Frederic Bastiat
“When it is a question of money, everybody
is of the same religion.”
“In a free market, all prices, wages, and
profits are determined — not by the arbitrary
whim of the rich or of the poor, not by
anyone’s “greed” or by anyone’s need —
but by the law of supply and demand. The
mechanism of a free market reflects and sums
up all the economic choices and decisions
made by all the participants. Men trade
their goods or services by mutual consent
to mutual advantage, according to their own
independent, uncoerced judgment. A man
can grow rich only if he is able to offer better
values — better products or services, at a
lower price — than others are able to offer.”
Ayn Rand
Voltaire
“By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity
is beneficial to all others.”
“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.”
Frederic Bastiat
Thomas Sowell
3
ONE / WHAT CAPITALISM IS
2
“When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full,
pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissezfaire capitalism—with a separation of state
and economics, in the same way and for the
same reasons as the separation of state and
church.”
TWO / HOW MARKETS WORK
Ayn Rand
“It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard to
their own interest.”
“In the department of economy, an act, a
habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not
only to an effect, but to a series of effects.
Of these effects, the first only is immediate;
it manifests itself simultaneously with
its cause - it is seen. The others unfold in
succession - they are not seen: it is well for
us, if they are foreseen.”
Frederic Bastiat
“As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much
as he can both to employ his capital in the support of
domestic industry . . . he intends only his own gain,
and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of
his intention.”
“Wealth, in a free market, is achieved by
a free, general, “democratic” vote—by the
sales and the purchases of every individual
who takes part in the economic life of the
country. Whenever you buy one product
rather than another, you are voting for the
success of some manufacturer. And, in this
type of voting, every man votes only on those
matters which he is qualified to judge: on his
own preferences, interests, and needs. No
one has the power to decide for others or to
substitute his judgment for theirs.”
Adam Smith
Ayn Rand
Adam Smith
5
TWO / HOW MARKETS WORK
4
“The economic value of a man’s work is
determined, on a free market, by a single
principle: by the voluntary consent of those
who are willing to trade him their work
or products in return. This is the moral
meaning of the law of supply and demand.”
T H R E E / C A P I T A L I S M vs S O C I A L I S M
Walter Williams
“It is a socialist idea that making profits
is a vice; I consider the real vice is
making losses.”
Winston Churchill
“A man who chooses between drinking a
glass of milk and a glass of a solution of
potassium cyanide does not choose between
two beverages; he chooses between life
and death. A society that chooses between
capitalism and socialism does not choose
between two social systems; it chooses
between social cooperation and the
disintegration of society. Socialism is not an
alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative
to any system under which men can live as
human beings.”
Ludwig von Mises
7
T H R E E / C A P I T A L I S M vs S O C I A L I S M
6
“Call it what you want—capitalism, free
enterprise, laissez faire or whatever—but
a system that upholds property rights
and otherwise allows free people to be
themselves is remarkable precisely because
it’s not a “system” per se. No deluded,
pretentious planners devise or direct it. It’s
no Rube Goldberg contraption of mandates
and decrees. It’s simply what happens
when you leave peaceful people alone. They
produce more and satisfy human wants to
a far greater extent than empty nanny-state
promises could ever hope to deliver.”
“Despite the miracles of capitalism, it
doesn’t do well in popularity polls. One of the
reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated
against the non-existent, non-realizable
utopias of socialism or communism. Any
earthly system, when compared to a Utopia,
will pale in comparison. But for the ordinary
person, capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior
to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday
needs and desires.”
Walter Williams
FOUR / SUCCESS OF CAPITALISM
Ayn Rand
“Take a view of the Royal Exchange in
London, a place more venerable than many
courts of justice, where the representatives
of all nations meet for the benefit of mankind.
There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the
Christian transact together, as though they
all professed the same religion, and give the
name of infidel to none but bankrupts. There
the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist,
and the Churchman depends on the
Quaker’s word.”
Voltaire
“It is the highest impertinence and
presumption, therefore, in kings and
ministers, to pretend to watch over the
economy of private people, and to restrain
their expense. . .They are themselves always,
and without any exception, the greatest
spendthrifts in the society. Let them look
well after their own expense, and they may
safely trust private people with theirs.”
Adam Smith
“The ‘private sector’ of the economy is, in
fact, the voluntary sector; and the ‘public
sector’ is, in fact, the coercive sector.”
Henry Hazlitt
“When buying and selling are controlled by
legislation, the first things to be bought and
sold are legislators.”
P. J. O’Rourke
9
FIVE / ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
8
“Capitalism has created the highest standard
of living ever known on earth. The evidence is
incontrovertible. The contrast between West
and East Berlin is the latest demonstration,
like a laboratory experiment for all to see.”
FIVE / ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
“It has often been found that profuse
expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd
commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals,
disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions,
conflagrations, inundation, have not been able
to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of
private citizens have been able to create it.”
Grover Cleveland
Thomas Babington Macauley
“I contend that for a nation to try to tax
itself into prosperity is like a man standing
in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by
the handle.”
Winston Churchill
“When a government controls both the
economic power of individuals and the
coercive power of the state, this violates a
fundamental rule of happy living: Never let
the people with all the money and the people
with all the guns be the same people.”
P. J. O’Rourke
“If you bound the arms and legs of goldmedal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him
down with chains, threw him in a pool and he
sank, you wouldn’t call it a ‘failure of swimming.’
So, when markets have been weighted down
by inept and excessive regulation, why call this
a failure of capitalism?”
Peter Boettke
“Private capitalism makes a steam engine;
State capitalism makes pyramids.”
Frank Chodorov
11
FIVE / ROLE OF GOVERNMENT
10
“When more of the people’s sustenance is
exacted through the form of taxation than
is necessary to meet the just obligations of
government and expenses of its economical
administration, such exaction becomes
ruthless extortion and a violation of the
fundamental principles of free government.”
12
“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted,
they’d have said a faster horse.”
Henry Ford
“A market is never saturated with a good
product, but it is very quickly saturated with a
bad one.”
13
SIX / THE ENTREPRENEUR
“Capitalism demands the best of every man –
his rationality – and rewards him accordingly.
It leaves every man free to choose the work he
likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for
the products of others, and to go as far on the
road of achievement as his ability and ambition
will carry him.”
Ayn Rand
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways
that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison
“You can’t ask customers what they want and
then try to give that to them. By the time you
get it built, they’ll want something new.”
Steve Jobs
“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my
career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times,
I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot
and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over
again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan
SIX / THE ENTREPRENEUR
Henry Ford
SEVEN / MORALITY OF CAPITALISM
Ayn Rand
“Hard work spotlights the character of people:
some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their
noses, and some don’t turn up at all.”
15
Sam Ewing
“The man who has the largest capacity for
work and thought is the man who is bound
to succeed.”
Henry Ford
“I want the people of America to be able to
work less for the government and more for
themselves. I want them to have the rewards of
their own industry. This is the chief meaning of
freedom. Until we can reestablish a condition
under which the earnings of the people can
be kept by the people, we are bound to suffer
a very severe and distinct curtailment of
our liberty.”
“Commerce is a cure for the most destructive
prejudices; for it is almost a general rule, that
whereever we find agreeable manners, there
commerce flourishes; and that wherever there
is commerce, there we meet with agreeable
manners.”
Calvin Coolidge
Montesquieu
SEVEN / MORALITY OF CAPITALISM
14
“The moral justification of capitalism does
not lie in the altruist claim that it represents
the best way to achieve “the common good.”
It is true that capitalism does...but this is
merely a secondary consequence. The moral
justification of capitalism lies in the fact
that it is the only system consonant with
man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s
survival qua man, and that its ruling principle
is: justice.”
YOUR IDEAS
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Use this space for noting thoughts. Help us continue the
conversation by sharing your ideas about capitalism in
the modern world with us at [email protected]
“By virtue of exchange, one man’s prosperity is
beneficial to all others.”
Frederic Bastiat
The mission of the Clemson Institute for the Study of
Capitalism is to shape America’s future by educating a
new generation of young people who will understand
proper moral foundations of a free society.
If you are interested in learning more about the
Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism,
including our academic program and summer
conferences, please see our website for
more information:
clemson.edu/capitalism
[email protected]
facebook.com/clemsoncapitalism
“Every man lives by exchanging.”
Adam Smith
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Clemson University • Clemson, SC • 29634
A publication by:
the Clemson Institute
for the
Study of Capitalism