"At a very early stage in history we are encountering "survivorship bias" - the fact that only the best results tend to show up in the history books."

"The real reason that physicians are rotten investors is that it never occurs to them that finance is a science, just like medicine."

"The brokerage and mutual fund business form a financial colossus that bestrides modern financial, and increasingly, social and political life."

"We tend to think of technological progress as an ever accelerating affair, but it just isn't so."

"many seemingly independent businessmen or craftsman are more or less well paid retainers of larger corporations, such as the cobbler, operating a United States shoe machine or an automobile dealer holding a license of the General Motors Corporation."

"It has been estimated that even in the absence of net investment, the mere substitution of modern machinery for worn-out equipment in the United States would cause an annual productivity increase of approximately 1.5 percent."

"Schumpter's daring and dashing entrepreneur is now a legendary figure from the distant past - if not from the mythology of capitalism - or is to be found only in the demimonde of business, founding new ice cream parlors or "deep freeze subscription clubs"."

"Indeed, the "whole bourgeoisie" on whose behalf the government was acting as its "committee" was a composite of a vast multitude of businessmen appearing as a conglomeration of many different and divergent groups and interests."

"If society has a technical need, that helps science forward more than ten universities."

"By elevating the dictum of the market to the role of the sole criterion of rationality and efficiency, economics denies even all "respectability" to the distinction between essential and non-essential consumption, between productive and unproductive labor, between actual and potential surplus."

"In a capitalist country foreign trade, like any other trade, is carried on by individual firms, and individual firms cannot be guided in their activities by "global"considerations, by concern with the impact of their operations on the economy as a whole."

"Indeed, I find it illuminating to consider to what extent our "classical conditions" for economic growth are satisfied in the current, monopolistic phase of capitalism."

"The process of writing is a process of learning; and much has become clearer to me in the attempt to transform my original rough notes into what I hope is an intelligible presentation."

"One would think that the record of already existing regulatory agencies is sufficiently eloquent in showing that it is Big Business that does the regulating rather than vice versa."

"But when reason and the study of history began revealing the irrationality, the limitations, and the merely transitory nature of the capitalist order, bourgeois ideology as a whole and with it bourgeois economics began abandoning both reason and history."

"Much if not all we know about the complex mechanism responsible for the development (and stagnation) of productive forces, and for the rise and decay of social organizations, is the result of the analytical work undertaken by Marx and by those whom he inspired."

"As Hegel well knew, the ascent of reason has never followed a straight line."

"In fact, all the additional knowledge gained by an irrationally constituted society may but enlarge and enhance the powers of death and destruction."

"It is in underdeveloped world that he central, overriding fact of our epoch becomes manifest to the naked eye: the capitalist system, once a mighty engine of economic development, has turned into a no less formidable hurdle to human advancement."

"To contribute to the emergence of a society in which development will supplant stagnation, in which growth will take the place of decay, and in which culture will put an end to barbarism is the noblest, and, indeed, the only true function of intellectual endeavor."

"For it is no railways, roads, and power stations that give rise to industrial capitalism: it is the emergence of industrial capitalism that leads to the building of railways, to the construction of roads, and to the establishment of power stations."

"The principal impact of foreign enterprise on the development of the underdeveloped countries lies in hardening and strengthening the sway of merchant capitalism, in slowing down and indeed preventing its transformation into industrial capitalism."

"The present Indian government, however, is neither able or willing to accept the challenge and to provide the leadership in breaking the resistance of urban and rural interests."

"The desire to tell the truth is only one condition for being an intellectual. The other is courage, readiness to carry on rational inquiry to wherever it may lead … to withstand … comfortable and lucrative conformity."

"That the means of imperialist policy overshadow almost entirely its original ends has tremendous implications."

"They lived in abysmal misery, yet they had no prospect of a better tomorrow. They existed under capitalism, yet there was no accumulation of capital."

"Whatever market for manufactured goods emerged in colonial and dependent countries did not become the "eternal market" of these countries. Thrown wide open by colonization and by unequal treaties, it became an appendage of the "internal market" of Western capitalism."

"That's where all the foreign aid (which might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries) went as well. The U.S. government still squanders about $20 billion a year this way, and European governments spend proportionally even more; it's all gone straight down a giant rathole."

"The historical record suggests that the transition to to a new hegemon has always been attended by what I have elsewhere called hegemonic war."

"The economic success of the Reagan Administration was largely dependent upon the pyramiding of massive debt and the siphoning of capital from the rest of the world."

"In short, the elimination of the financial legacy of Reaganomics could force the United States to make some exceptionally difficult choices indeed."

"Despite its increased dependence on the international economy, America continues to behave as if it were either a closed economy or the leader whom everyone else should automatically follow."

"The competitive nation-state system, with all its capacity for good and evil, is spreading in the Third World and is transforming that world."

"Through exploitation of its influence over global financial affairs, the United States has been able to cover the costs of its hegemonic position, preserve a false domestic prosperity, and mask the consequences of its relative political and economic decline."

"Japanese refer to Europe as a "museum" and America as a "farm.""

"In the abstract world of American economists, equations run both ways; they believe that by changing the sign of a variable from plus to minus or from minus to plus or the price and quantity of x or y, the direction of historical movement can be reversed."

"Specialization makes the welfare of the society vulnerable to the market and to political forces beyond national control."

"In many societies the domestic social costs of adjustment to changing patterns of comparative advantage are believed to outweigh the advantages of further trade liberalization."

"Many critics see international trade as a form of cultural imperialism that must be strictly controlled."

"The multinational corporation and international production reflect a world in which capital and technology have become increasingly mobile, while labor has remained relatively immobile."

"The dreams of "leaving it up to the market" or of returning to a politically neutral gold standard cannot succeed because the nature of the monetary system has a profound impact on the interests of powerful groups and states. Affected groups and states will always try to intervene in the operation of the system to make it serve their interests."

"Structuralism argues that a liberal capitalist world economy tends to preserve or actually increase inequalities between developed and less developed economies."

"Liberal economists conceive of societies as black boxes connected by exchange rates; as long as exchange rates are correct, what goes on inside the black box is regarded as not very important."

"Trade is the oldest and most important economic nexus among nations. Indeed, trade along with war ha been central to the evolution of international relations."

"The core of the Marxist critique of capitalism is that although the individual capitalist is rational (as liberals assume), the capitalist system itself is irrational."

"The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth."

"A market is not politically neutral; its existence creates economic power which one actor can use against another."

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

"Does the functioning of the world economy tend to concentrate wealth and power, or does it tend to diffuse it?"