Quotes from Susan George

Much of what is called investment is actually nothing more than mergers and acquisitions, and of course mergers and acquisitions are generally accompanied by downsizing.

The real fight is about what should be in the marketplace and what should not. Should education be a marketable commodity? Should healthcare?

I used to work a lot on food issues and every time somebody predicted that production would be inadequate they got egg on their face a year or two later.

It seems to be the thing now that young people are getting back into politics.

There's people coming in who've never done any politics at all, who've never been in a trade union, they've never been in a political party, they've never done anything, but they do feel a kind of urgency.

Debt is such a powerful tool, it is such a useful tool, it's much better than colonialism ever was because you can keep control without having an army, without having a whole administration.

There is no degree of human suffering which in and of itself is going to bring about change. Only organisation can change things.

We're trying to run a 21st century society and economy with 19th century Darwinian, competitive, crude ideas.

The corporate and financial worlds want to make the rules but they certainly do not want to be seen making them, or governing anyone.

Intellectually we know all we need to know, technologically we could remedy our plight starting today, but inertia and vested interests rule.

I'm afraid we're stuck with Kant and his"crooked timber of humanity, from which no straight thing was ever made." If we're going to build another world, it will be from this crooked timber and no other, so we'd better start learning the necessary carpentry.

The point of what we are all doing, wherever we are doing it, whether or not we see our actions in exactly the same framework, is to create spaces in which humans and nature can thrive, to make demands on the present system and force it to respond, to find contradictions in it and heighten them, to bend it until it either gives way or snaps.

By nature, parties must also have a position on just about everything, while movements need not because they have no pretensions to governing.

Those who genuinely want to help the movement should study the rich and powerful, not the poor and powerless...The poor and powerless already know what is wrong with their lives and those who want to help them should analyse the forces that keep them where they are. Better a sociology of the Pentagon or the Houston country club than of single mothers or inner-city gangs.

As we analyse, criticise, propose and strategise, let's never forget that we are all part of a vast mutual liberation society, that as we work to free others, they are also working to free us.

What's immediately profitable is the only kind of logic that capitalism understands.

Having enough to eat, being able to educate your children, have reasonably stable employment, and being able to live in a society which isn't collapsing around you-all of these things have been generally eroded.

As the rich consume more and more, they are clearly not going to want to downgrade their own status.

I used to work a lot on food issues and every time somebody predicted that production would be inadequate they got egg on their face a year or two later.

There's people coming in who've never done any politics at all, who've never been in a trade union, they've never been in a political party, they've never done anything, but they do feel a kind of urgency.

Debt is such a powerful tool, it is such a useful tool, it's much better than colonialism ever was because you can keep control without having an army, without having a whole administration.

The World Development Movement, to take just one example, is doing good work. Some political parties are, too.

Now we are flying off into outer space, there is no clear curb on what can be done in the name of the economy.

What you need if you want jobs are small and medium sized enterprises, local initiatives, labour intensive work, community development, service providers and the like.