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Capitalists are motivated not chiefly by the desire to consume wealth or indulge their appetites, but by the freedom and power to consummate their entrepreneurial ideas.

George Gilder

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George Gilder
Age: 84
Born: 1939
Born: November 29
Economist
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Power
Indulge
Ideas
Capitalist
Appetite
Consummate
Motivated
Capitalists
Wealth
Appetites
Freedom
Chiefly
Desire
Entrepreneurial
Inspirational
Consume

More quotes by George Gilder

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Nothing is more deadly to achievement than the belief that effort will not be rewarded, that the world is a bleak and discriminatory place in which only the predatory and the specially preferred can get ahead.
George Gilder
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Intelligent design itself does not have any content.
George Gilder
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The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. ...The powers of the mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.
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Unlike an inexorable, Newtonian great machine, the economy is not a closed system.
George Gilder
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On every continent and in every epoch the peoples who have excelled in creating wealth have been the victims of some of society's greatest brutalities.
George Gilder
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Entrepreneurial knowledge has little to do with certified expertise, advanced degrees, or the learning of establishment schools. The fashionably educated and cultivated spurn the kind of fanatically focused learning commanded by the innovators. Wealth all too often comes from doing what other people consider insufferably boring or unendurably hard.
George Gilder
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Socialism is an insurance policy bought by all the members of a national economy to shield them from risk. But the result is to shield them from knowledge of the real dangers and opportunities.
George Gilder
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Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind.
George Gilder
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The envy of excellence leads to perdition the love of it leads to the light.
George Gilder
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Hatred of producers of wealth still flourishes and has become, in fact, the racism of the intelligentsia.
George Gilder
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In a world of dumb terminals and telephones, networks had to be smart. But in a world of smart terminals, networks have to be dumb.
George Gilder
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Activity and creativity almost always flow to the least regulated arena.
George Gilder
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But if the 1 percent and the 0.1 percent are respected and allowed to risk their wealth - and new rebels are allowed to rise up and challenge them - America will continue to be the land where the last regularly become the first by serving others.
George Gilder
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The United States is probably the most [socially] mobile society in the history of the world. The virtues that are most valuable in it are diligence, discipline, ambition, and a willingness to take risks. Education and credentials are most important in government elsewhere most skills are learned on the job.
George Gilder
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Wealth usually comes from doing what other people find insufferably boring.
George Gilder
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People cannot be expected to learn one expertise and just apply it routinely in a job. Your expertise is in steadily renewing your knowledge base and extending it to new areas. That lifelong cycle of learning really is the foundation of the new information organization and economy.
George Gilder
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The welfare culture tells the man he is not a necessary part of the family he feels dispensable, his wife knows he is dispensable, his children sense it.
George Gilder
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Poverty is less a matter of income than of prospects. While the incomes of the poor have steadily risen through Great Society largesse, their prospects have plummeted as families have broken into dependent fragments.
George Gilder
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The first priority of any serious program against poverty is to strengthen the male role in poor families.
George Gilder
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At the heart of capitalism is the unification of knowledge and power. As Friedrich Hayek, the leader of the Austrian school of economics, put it, To assume all the knowledge to be given to a single mind... is to disregard everything that is important and significant in the real world. Because knowledge is dispersed, power must be as well.
George Gilder