It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term.

I'm sure Putnam is right that there's been a decline in certain kinds of organizations like bowling leagues. But people participate in communities in other ways.

One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism.

So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.

The basic fault lines today are not between people with different beliefs but between people who hold these beliefs with an element of uncertainty and people who hold these beliefs with a pretense of certitude.

We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.

In a market economy, however, the individual has some possibility of escaping from the power of the state.

Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there's no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.

When certain branches of the economy become obsolete, as in the case of the steel industry, not only do jobs disappear, which is obviously a terrible social hardship, but certain cultures also disappear.

If the cultural elite has its way, the U.S. will be much more like Europe.

Some people think that as the Chinese economy becomes more and more capitalistic it will inevitably become more democratic.

If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes.

It has been true in Western societies and it seems to be true elsewhere that you do not find democratic systems apart from capitalism, or apart from a market economy, if you prefer that term.

The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture.

I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization and modernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization.

But we don't have an example of a democratic society existing in a socialist economy - which is the only real alternative to capitalism in the modern world.

Even in a society as tightly controlled as Singapore's, the market creates certain forces which perhaps in the long run may lead to democracy.

Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.

There is a continuum of values between the churches and the general community. What distinguishes the handling of these values in the churches is mainly the heavier dosage of religious vocabulary involved.

The problem with liberal Protestantism in America is not that it has not been orthodox enough, but that it has lost a lot of religious substance.

Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful.

Our institute's agenda is relatively simple. We study the relationship between social-economic change and culture. By culture we mean beliefs, values and lifestyles. We cover a broad range of issues, and we work very internationally.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

I don't think that left to its own devices, capitalism moves along smoothly and everyone gets treated fairly in the process. Capitalism is like a child: if you want the child to grow up free and productive, somebody's got to look over the shoulder of that child.

I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism.

I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones who paid very dearly for those great fortunes.

Whether we look at capitalism, taxes, business, or government, the data show a clear and consistent pattern: 70 percent of Americans support the free enterprise system and are unsupportive of big government.

We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.

Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away.

Capitalism is war; socialism is peace.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

Chicago is the product of modern capitalism, and, like other great commercial centers, is unfit for human habitation.

The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.

Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to.

There are a few people, but a diminishing number, who still believe that Marxism, as an economic system, off era a coherent alternative to capitalism, and socialism has, indeed, triumphed in one country.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

The way the credit cards were made in the '80s to be a people's form of capitalism and be able to make it so that you could get a loan that you would have been denied previous, now that's the way stocks are.

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

The cure for capitalism's failing would require that a government would have to rise above the interests of one class alone.

I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy.

Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven't had capitalism.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century bourgeois Europe needed to emancipate itself from that combination of feudalism and commercial capitalism which we know as mercantilism.

Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.

Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.