Art Quote by William Blake

It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the…

— Iain Banks

Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is…

— David Hume

Empires are doomed. They become more diffuse, more broke, demagogues rule, and so I was just pointing out some similarities between past empires and…

— Dar Williams

Commerce is the great civilizer.

— Robert Green Ingersoll

In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the…

— Alexis de Tocqueville

“It is a sequence familiar in the capitals of other great empires: the extreme inequality created as loot from abroad pours in; the corruption…

— Andrew Marr

It's always been the case that you have the really rich, and the really poor. But hey, look, all the great empires have their…

— Mickey Rourke

Commerce is the equalizer of the wealth of nations.

— William E. Gladstone

In all earlier civilizations, it should be remembered, commerce was treated as a narrow activity and by no means the senior sector in society.

— John Ralston Saul

The thing that's really important to understand is, the last thing an empire traditionally does is drive itself into bankruptcy. You've seen that with…

— Juan Enriquez

The spirit of commerce is frugality, economy, moderation, labor, ponderance, tranquillity, order, and rule. So long as this spirit subsides, the riches it produces…

— Baron de Montesquieu

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it…

— Edward Said