I think it must be conceded that it is possible to create a society in which the response to market failure is not a swing to socialism, but an exacerbation of individual efforts to stay ahead by making and spending yet more money. Does the public health service have long waiting lists and inadequate facilities? Buy private insurance. Has public transport broken down? Buy a car for each member of the family above driving age. Has the countryside been built over or the footpaths eradicated? Buy some elaborate exercise machinery and work out at home. Is air pollution intolerable? Buy an air-filtering unit and stay indoors. Is what comes out of the tap foul to the taste and chock-full of carcinogens? Buy bottled water. And so on. We know it can all happen because it has: I have been doing little more than describing Southern California. Now it is worth noticing two things about the private substitutes that I have described. The first is that in the aggregate they are probably much more expensive than would be the implementation of the appropriate public policy. The second is that they are extremely poor replacements for the missing outcomes of good public policy. Nevertheless, it is plain that the members of a society can become so alienated from one another, so mistrustful of any form of collective action, that they prefer to go it alone.
-- Brian Barry

For complex reasons, our culture allows "economy" to mean only "money economy." It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement. I am no economist, but I venture to suggest that one of the laws of such an economy is that a farmer is worth more dead than alive. A second law is that anything diseased is more profitable than anything that is healthy. What is wrong with us contributes more to the "gross national product" than what is right with us.
~ Wendell Berry

You can't build hospitals or schools, you can't spend money educating or immunizing your people, whilst there is this burden of debt sitting on your head. It effects the lives of about a billion people who are living on less than a dollar a day. We're trying to get them a fresh start... It is a moral as well as economic imperative that we come to their aid right now... That's what we're asking for these poorest nations of the world - Give them a fresh start. Cancel those old debts. Let them get up off their knees and take care of themselves...
-- Bono

An important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money. -- Gro Harlem Brundtland

There's two globalizations. There's the globalization of the elites, of the corporations, represented by the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organization. That's the global state. It's a secret global government information. There's another globalization that's grass roots globalization. The Fair Trade Networks, the Sister Cities, Sister Schools, Citizen Diplomacy, the work we do at Global Exchange, linking people up at the grass roots. That represents majority forces. The elite globalization represents minority forces. The elite globalization is about making money. It's money values. The people's globalization, the democratic mass globalization is about life values. So you got two paradigms, the money cycle and the life cycle and they're in contestation.
-- Kevin Danaher

Do you realize that $150 billion of our tax money is given to the corporations, unions and wealthy people for tax breaks, special subsidies and special regulations? That money would be available for health and education and building bridges. -- Doris Haddock (Granny D)

Think of the millions of young men who died fighting for democracy. We spit on their graves when we let democracy slip away into the sewer of illegal money."
-- Doris Haddock (Granny D)

Real peace is not in power, money, or weapons, but in deep inner peace.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh

* "To me, love, spirituality and life are all the same thing. To me they're all about honoring the circle, and they're just different ways of defining the same understanding. Our society as a whole, because we have placed our love for money above our love for life, has devalued the sacred and devalued love."
-- Julia Butterfly Hill

* Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
-- Molly Ivins

I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"What we are fighting for is not just the fishes and the birds. We protect nature not for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our communities, and if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us. We're not protecting nature for nature's sake. We're protecting it because it enriches us, yes, it enriches our economy and we ignore that at our peril. But it is also enriching us aesthetically, recreationally, culturally, historically and spiritually. Human beings have other appetites besides money. And if we don't feed them, we're not going to grow up…we're not going to become the kind of beings that our creator intended us to become."
~ Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Clean water is a necessity that we can no longer take for granted. Each year more people die of water related diseases than any other cause of death on this planet. With a higher rate of suffering and mortality than diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol, or war; or any two combined for that matter! An entire economy is growing around water. Those without money are suffering the most and risk severe illness from contaminated sources
-- Jewel Kilcher

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

* When the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity."
-- David Korten

Utilities used deregulation to effect a series of mergers limiting competition. In order to accelerate profits, cost cutting ensued, involving the layoff of thousands of utility company employees, including some who were responsible for maintenance of generation, transmission, and distribution systems. A number of investor-owned utilities stopped investing in the maintenance and repair of their own equipment, and, instead, cut costs to enhance the value of their stock rather than spending money to enhance the value of their service.
-- Dennis Kucinich

* There is at the moment in the world a battle going on between those who are pursuing materialistic paths—globalizers of economic growth and those hell-bent on this ‘big is better’ idea—on the one hand, and on the other hand those who are dedicated to spiritual renewal, more small-scale development, more human scale, more sustainability, more crafts and arts. Where human beings are not just sold to companies and money and those kinds of things. Where human beings have a sacred path.
-- Satish Kumar

* The legislation of the government has been directed rather to the protection of the rights of money and property than to the best good of the citizen.
-- Susette LaFlesche

"You see all these things that make you feel desperate or sad, but you realize changes can be made, and it doesn't take a lot of money on our part to make a change in people's lives."
-- John Legend

* "This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security."
-- Michael Lerner

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country....corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
-- Abraham Lincoln

* The political system is not for the people. The people are secondary to the economy. It's about what generates money, not about what benefits the people.
-- Ziggy Marley

* Community is as endangered by surplus as it is by deficit. If there is too much money floating around it enables people to have no need of each other.
-- Bill McKibben

* We could dramatically accelerate innovations in sustainability and social justice just by making choices to use our money for positive solutions.
-- Carol Newell

We have an obligation and a responsibility to be investing in our students and our schools. We must make sure that people who have the grades, the desire and the will, but not the money, can still get the best education possible.
-- Barack Obama

"If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products as they do on advertising then they wouldn't have to advertise them."
-- Will Rogers

"Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need."
-- Will Rogers

* The time has come to end this charade. The debts are unaffordable. If they won't cancel the debts I would suggest obstruction; you do it yourselves. Africa should say: 'thank you very much but we need this money to meet the needs of children who are dying right now so we will put the debt servicing payments into urgent social investment in health, education, drinking water, control of AIDS and other needs.'
-- Jeffrey Sachs

The only way in which a nation can make itself wealthy and prosperous is by good housekeeping: that is, by providing for its wants in the order of their importance, and allowing no money to be wasted on whims and luxuries until necessities have been thoroughly served.
-- George Bernard Shaw

The global economy is a runaway train that is causing more and more suffering in the world. The current 'profit before people' system is causing the gap between the very rich and the very poor to grow larger each year. In order to transform the global economy into a true global community, we need to create a Better World Economy - an economic system that gives value to other commodities besides money. Then we can create more sustainable local, national and global communities.
-- Robert Alan Silverstein

“Philanthropy is all about making a positive difference in the world by devoting your resources and your time to causes you believe in. In my case, I like to support causes where “a lot of good comes from a little bit of good,” or, in other words, where the positive social returns vastly exceed the amount of time and money invested.”
-- Jeffrey Skoll

* In the long run the purpose is to form a new security system in a world when nobody goes hungry because we spend money on armaments.
-- Inga Thorsson

The lack of money is the root of all evil.
-- Mark Twain

* Markets and money must again become the servants and not the masters of our vision and values.
-- Jakob von Uexkull

* The mythology about the UN is absolutely breathtaking. People believe it costs a great deal of money to the United States. Completely untrue: it doesn't. The United States makes a net gain. People believe it's a world government, although the UN is a pathetically weak organization which improvises in emergencies to try to prevent the worst from happening.
-- Sir Brian Urquhart

Poverty is multidimensional. It extends beyond money incomes to education, health care, political participation and advancement of one's own culture and social organisation.
-- Atal Bihari Vajpayee

* War and the preparation for war rob resources from human security. As long as we honour war and warriors we maintain fear and hate, always based on ignorance; and fear is the enemy of learning, it gives ignorance its power. As long as we misplace money for weapons – we keep water polluted, we keep far too many women illiterate and unskilled, we prevent health care and education from being universally enjoyed – we promote poverty. These are among the root causes of violent conflict.
-- Cora Weiss

What you focus on expands, and when you focus on the goodness in your life, you create more of it. Opportunities, relationships, even money flowed my way when I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life.
-- Oprah Winfrey

* “Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputations on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”
-- Victoria Woodhull