Quotes by David Graeber - Page 2

But in the years since the neoliberal project really has been stripped down to what was always its essence: not an economic project at all, but a political project, designed to devastate the imagination, and willing - with it's cumbersome securitization and insane military projects - to destroy the capitalist order itself if that's what it took to make it seem inevitable.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Military
Order
Years
Copy Quote
The notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining what the world would be like if everyone's behavior was utterly consistent with some abstract moral ideal-in this case, economic theories that assume all human action is based on calculating, systematic, (but scrupulously law-abiding), greed.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Dream
Greed
Law
Copy Quote
What about precarious labor? It's actually not the most efficient form of labor at all. They were much more efficient when they had loyalty to their workers and people were allowed to be creative and contribute - you know that what precarious labor does is that it's the best weapon ever made to depoliticize labor. They're always putting the political in front of the economic.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Loyalty
Creative
People
Political
Copy Quote
We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens - like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It's never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Believe
Mean
Philosophy
Copy Quote
Now, we're used to thinking of communism as being once-upon-a-time-all-things-were-owned-in-common, maybe-someday-this-will-come-again. And people agree that there is a sort of epic narrative going on here. I think we should just throw this narrative out, it's irrelevant anyway, and who cares who owns things? I don't. You know, we all own the White House. So what? I still can't go in, right?
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Epic
Thinking
White
Copy Quote
The question we should be asking is not why people are sometimes cruel, or even why a few people are usually cruel (all evidence suggests true sadists are an extremely small proportion of the population overall), but how we have come to create institutions that encourage such behavior and that suggest cruel people are in some ways admirable-or at least as deserving of sympathy as those they push around.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Asking
People
Population
Copy Quote
Meanwhile, the U.S. debt remains, as it has been since 1790, a war debt; the United States continues to spend more on its military than do all other nations on earth put together, and military expenditures are not only the basis of the government's industrial policy; they also take up such a huge proportion of the budget that by many estimations, were it not for them, the United States would not run a deficit at all.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Running
War
Military
Copy Quote
Traditional hedonism...was based on the direct experience of pleasure: wine, women and song; sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll; or whatever the local variant. The problem, from a capitalist perspective, is that there are inherent limits to all this. People become sated, bored...Modern self-illusory hedonism solves this dilemma because here, what one is really consuming are fantasies and day-dreams about what having a certain product would be like.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Dream
Sex
Song
Copy Quote
I came to the conclusion that most people in America would really like to be able to get a job where they think they're doing something noble and nice and good and it isn't just for the money. But the reason they hate what they call the cultural elite is that they see it as a class that's grabbed all the jobs where you can get paid to do something that isn't just for the money - if it's art, if it's charity, if it's intellectual, if it's political, whatever it might be.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Art
Hate
Nice
Copy Quote
The fascinating thing about standard economic stories is exactly that: they assume that everybody wants that kind of closure. That all human relations are forms of exchange, because if everything is an exchange then it's true that we're both equals. We walk up, I give you something, you give me something, and we walk away. Or I give you something, you don't give me something right now, and you owe me. So if we have any ongoing relationships at all, it's because somebody is in debt.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Giving
Ongoing
Stories
Copy Quote
Within a capitalist corporation, someone says, "Lend me a wrench," and someone asks, "Yeah, what do I get?" You assume that the idea of each according to his or her abilities, each according to his or her needs - in solving a problem - is actually the only thing that works. And in situations of disaster, there are often communistic notions of improvisation, where you basically exchange hierarchies and all of a sudden all those things that are luxuries that you can't afford, you have them in an emergency.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Ideas
Luxury
Needs
Copy Quote
Student loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If there’s a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves? There goes your music. There goes your culture. There goes everything new that would pop out. And in a way, this is what’s happened to our society. We’re a society that has lost any ability to incorporate the interesting, creative and eccentric people.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Imagination
People
Suicide
Copy Quote
If your father is an air-conditioner repairman from Nebraska, its conceivable that you might become a CEO, but you can't imagine being the drama critic for the New York Times. So if you come from a background like that and you want to actually have a career which involves doing something noble in the world, what can you do? You can join the army. That's about it. Or you can work for the church. That explains a lot of the focus of right-wing populism. The right wing figured that out, that people want enough to survive and to do good.
David Graeber / Anthropologist
Army
Drama
Father
Copy Quote

Related Anthropologist Authors

Zora Neale Hurston
Anthropologist
Wednesday, Jan 07, 1891
Thursday, Jan 28, 1960
Weston La Barre
Anthropologist
Wednesday, Dec 13, 1911
Wednesday, Mar 13, 1996
Wade Davis
Anthropologist
Monday, Dec 14, 1953
Thomas Buckley
Anthropologist

Thursday, Apr 16, 2015
Tanya Luhrmann
Anthropologist
Tuesday, Feb 24, 1959
Talal Asad
Anthropologist
Sherry Ortner
Anthropologist
Friday, Sep 19, 1941
Ruth Benedict
Anthropologist
Sunday, Jun 05, 1887
Friday, Sep 17, 1948
Ruth Behar
Anthropologist
Wednesday, Aug 22, 1956
Roy Rappaport
Anthropologist
Thursday, Mar 25, 1926
Thursday, Oct 09, 1997
Robert Lowie
Anthropologist
Tuesday, Jun 12, 1883
Saturday, Sep 21, 1957
Robert Gardner
Anthropologist
Thursday, Nov 05, 1925
Saturday, Jun 21, 2014
Richard Shweder
Anthropologist
Saturday, Feb 17, 1945
Richard Robbins
Anthropologist
Ray Birdwhistell
Anthropologist

Wednesday, Oct 19, 1994

View All Anthropologist Quotes

Top Authors

W. Edwards Deming
Statistician
Sunday, Oct 14, 1900
Monday, Dec 20, 1993
Kobe Bryant
Basketball Player
Wednesday, Aug 23, 1978
John F. Kennedy
35Th U.s. President
Tuesday, May 29, 1917
Friday, Nov 22, 1963
Oprah Winfrey
Media Proprietor
Friday, Jan 29, 1954
Ernest Hemingway
Author
Friday, Jul 21, 1899
Sunday, Jul 02, 1961
Carl Sagan
Astronomer
Friday, Nov 09, 1934
Friday, Dec 20, 1996
Vincent Van Gogh
Painter
Wednesday, Mar 30, 1853
Tuesday, Jul 29, 1890
Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor
Saturday, Apr 26, 0121
Friday, Mar 17, 0180
Dalai Lama
Saturday, Jul 06, 1935
Henry David Thoreau
Author
Saturday, Jul 12, 1817
Tuesday, May 06, 1862
Saint Augustine
Saint
Saturday, Nov 13, 0354
Wednesday, Aug 28, 0430
William Blake
Poet
Monday, Nov 28, 1757
Sunday, Aug 12, 1827
Martin Luther
Monk
Saturday, Nov 10, 1483
Monday, Feb 18, 1546
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Civil Rights Activist
Tuesday, Jan 15, 1929
Thursday, Apr 04, 1968
Dr. Seuss
Writer
Wednesday, Mar 02, 1904
Tuesday, Sep 24, 1991

View All Authors

David Graeber Quotes - Page 2

App & Tools

Related Anthropologist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page

Stay Connected

App & Tools

Related Anthropologist Authors

Popular Topic Tags

Top Authors

Share This Page