economic inspiration

What gives its special quality and character, its toughness and cohesion, to the industrial system built up in the last century and a-half, is not its exploded theory of economic harmonies. It is the doctrine that economic rights are anterior to, and independent of, economic functions.

--R.H. Tawney

The fact that two people exchange their products is by no means simply an economic fact. Such a fact -- that is, one whose content would be exhausted in the image that economics presents of it -- does not exist.

--Georg Simmel

Wealth is like muck. It is not good but it be spread.

--Francis Bacon

I do not deny that modern economic theory can make a contribution to running a household, or a village, or a region, or even the entire world -- though such a denial would at all be unrealistic. What I do deny is that modern economic theory can replace the traditional ways without any loss of information or quality of life.

--Paul Feyerabend

Nothing, however profitable, goes on forever.

--C.L.R. James

Between things there exist bonds of mutual aid hampered by man.

--Martín Adán

No man can save himself alone.

--Simone de Beauvoir