"The prosperity of a nation is not ... greater in the proportion in which it has amassed more wealth (ie, values of exchange), but in the proportion in which it has more developed its powers of production."

Friedrich List (1841)

"Conservatism, I argue, is not a matter of defending global capitalism at all costs, or securing the privileges of the few against the many. It is a matter of defending civil society, maintaining autonomous institutions, and defending the citizen against the abuse of power. Its underlying motive is not greed or the lust for power but simply attachment to a way of life."

Sir Roger Scruton (2014)

"There is something wrong with a society that is governed entirely by the imperatives of business, which recognises no restraint on trade apart from the market, and which makes business and enterprise into its primary values."

Sir Roger Scruton (1998)

"An economy obsessed by an alleged Gross National Product—no matter what is produced, or how—becomes inhumane. A society that thinks only of an alleged efficiency, regardless of the consequences to human beings, works its own ruin."

Russell Kirk (1993)

"Getting and spending are not the chief aims of human existence; but a sound economic basis for the person, the family, and the commonwealth is much to be desired."

Russell Kirk (1993)

"A sound economy cannot exist without a political state to protect it. Foolish political interference with the economy can result in general poverty, but wise political encouragement of the economy helps a society toward prosperity."

Russell Kirk (1989)

"Today’s conservatives are apt to insist that the great virtue of their economic doctrine is that it separates politics and the economy. But if economic policy is not politics—the authoritative assignment of social values—then what is it?"

George F. Will (1983)

"Government, unlike an economic market, has responsibilities. It has a duty to look down the road and consider the interests and needs of citizens yet unborn. The market has a remarkable ability to satisfy the desires of the day. Government has other, graver purposes."

George F. Will (1983)

"An economic order represents a political choice, and is a government product. We are all in it together, as citizens."

George F. Will (1983)

"To order its priorities, a political community needs a consensus as to its ultimate goal, i.e., the sum of these priorities. Only when you have such a consensus—only when you have some notion, however imprecise, of the good life and the good society—can you proceed to rank your programs on an agenda for action."

Irving Kristol (1971)

"Yes, individual liberty is a very fine thing, one of the very finest even. But order is also a very fine thing; and justice; and morality; and civility. All of these fine things have to be accommodated, one to another, in such a way as to ‘make sense’ to the citizens of a society. A free market is a superb economic mechanism; but it is not self-justifying."

Irving Kristol (1971)

"Thank God I am not a free-trader. In this country pernicious indulgence in the doctrine of free trade seems inevitably to produce fatty degeneration of the moral fibre."

Theodore Roosevelt (1895)

"In the work and its profits the Nation was an essential partner and equally entitled with the individual to share in the dividends."

Andrew Carnegie (1889)

"My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank … the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff."

Abraham Lincoln (1832)

"The doctrine of national economics teaches us that a country which hopes to attain the highest degree of independence, culture and material prosperity should adopt every measure within its power to defend its economic security from any foreign attack, whether such an attack takes the form of hostile legislation or military action. To enable a country to protect itself it is essential that it should establish industries and foster their development."

Friedrich List (1837)

"The great object of the institution of civil government is the improvement of the condition of those who are parties to the social compact, and no government, in whatever form constituted, can accomplish the lawful ends of its institution but in proportion as it improves the condition of those over whom it is established."

John Quincy Adams (1825)

"The object of wise government should be, by sound legislation, so to protect the industry of their own citizens against the policy of foreign powers, as to give it the most expansive force in the production of wealth."

Henry Clay (1824)

"Are we doomed to behold our industry languish and decay yet more and more? But there is a remedy, and that remedy consists in modifying our foreign policy, and in adopting a genuine AMERICAN SYSTEM."

Henry Clay (1824)

"Experience teaches that men are often so much governed by what they are accustomed to see and practice that the simplest and most obvious improvements, in the most ordinary occupations, are adopted with hesitation, reluctance, and by slow gradations... To produce the desirable changes as early as may be expedient may therefore require the incitement and patronage of government."

Alexander Hamilton (1791)

"It is the duty of every man in society to do something towards promoting the general prosperity and happiness; no man has a right, whatever his condition in life, to be a drone or an idler, or to pursue an occupation which is either useless or injurious to the community."

Daniel Raymond (1823)

"In what can [the public purse] be so useful, as in prompting and improving the efforts of industry?"

Alexander Hamilton (1791)

"The more thorough the examination of the question which relates to the encouragement of domestic manufactures, the more the true policy... will be found to lie between the extremes of doing nothing & prescribing everything, between admitting no exception to the rule of ‘laissez faire,’ and converting the exceptions into the rule."

James Madison (1829)

"A nation leaving its foreign trade, in all cases, to regulate itself, might soon find it regulated by other nations, into a subserviency to a foreign interest."

James Madison (1828)

"He, therefore, who is now against domestic manufacture, must be for reducing either to dependence on that foreign nation, or to be clothed in skins, and to live like wild beasts in dens and caverns. I am proud to say, I am not one of these."

Thomas Jefferson (1816)

"The absurdity of this doctrine of not legislating at all, and permitting every man to pursue his own interest in his own way, is manifest from its utter impracticability... The question, therefore, is not, and never will be, between law and no law, regulation and no regulation, but it must always be between the wisdom of different laws and different regulations."

Daniel Raymond (1823)

"When gentlemen have succeeded in their design of an immediate or gradual destruction of the American System, what is their substitute? Free trade! Free trade! The call for free trade, is as unavailing as the cry of a spoiled child... It never has existed; it never will exist."

Henry Clay (1832)