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The prevailing theory of capitalism suffers from one central and disabling flaw, a profound distrust and incomprehension of capitalism.

George Gilder

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George Gilder
Age: 84
Born: 1939
Born: November 29
Economist
Philosopher
Writer
New York City
New York
Capitalism
Disabling
Profound
Incomprehension
Theory
Flaw
Suffering
Prevailing
Suffers
Distrust
Flaws
Central

More quotes by George Gilder

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Entropy is Janus-faced. Its upside surprises are redemptive and favorable to freedom. It is freedom of choice. But the carrier itself requires constant vigilance against entropic noise. Order is not spontaneous, but it is a necessary condition for all the surprises of freedom and opportunity.
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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The first priority of any serious program against poverty is to strengthen the male role in poor families.
George Gilder
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Surely women's liberation is a most unpromising panacea. But the movement is working politically, because our sexuality is so confused, our masculinity so uncertain, and our families so beleaguered that no one knows what they are for or how they are sustained.
George Gilder
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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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Unlike an inexorable, Newtonian great machine, the economy is not a closed system.
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.
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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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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It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. As Henry Ford said many years earlier: If I had listened to my customers, I would have built a faster horse. Inventions in general express Shannon entropy. They come from the supply side.
George Gilder
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In embracing change, entrepreneurs ensure social and economic stability.
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 rates of taxation climb and the levels of capital decline, until the only remaining wealth beyond the reach of the regime is the very protein of human flesh, and that too is finally taxed, bound, and gagged, and brought to the colossal temple of the state - a final sacrifice of carnal revenue to feed the declining elite.
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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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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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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Capitalism begins with giving.
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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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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A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge
George Gilder