“ But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it… Eric Hobsbawm
“ It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans. Eric Hobsbawm
“ On the whole, however, it was accepted that money not only talked, but governed. All the industrialist had to get to be accepted among the governors of society was enough money. Eric Hobsbawm
“ As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who… Eric Hobsbawm
“ So far as I am aware no leader of a party of the European left in the past twenty-five years has declared capitalism as such to be unacceptable as a system. The only public figure to do so unhesitatin… Eric Hobsbawm
“ It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does. Eric Hobsbawm
“ There is a patent conflict between the need to reverse or at least to control the impact of our economy on the biosphere and the imperatives of a capitalist market: maximum continuing growth in the se… Eric Hobsbawm
“ It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does. The vast majority of printed works enter a state of suspended animation within a… Eric Hobsbawm
“ Seventy years after Marx’s death, one third of the human race lived under regimes ruled by communist parties which claimed to represent his ideas and realise his aspirations. Eric Hobsbawm
“ And yet, something has changed for the better. We have rediscovered that capitalism is not the answer, but the question. Eric Hobsbawm
“ The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all… Eric Hobsbawm
“ It rests on the attempt since the 1970s to translate a pathological degeneration of the principle of laissez-faire into economic reality by the systematic retreat of states from any regulation or cont… Eric Hobsbawm
“ Once again it is evident that even between major crises, ‘the market’ has no answer to the major problem confronting the twenty-first century: that unlimited and increasingly high-tech economic growth… Eric Hobsbawm
“ The Labour party on the whole has not been a very effective opposition since the election, partly because it spent months and months electing its new leader. I think the Labour party should, for one t… Eric Hobsbawm
“ More history than ever is today being revised or invented by people who do not want the real past, but only a past that suits their purpose. Today is the great age of historical mythology. The defence… Eric Hobsbawm
“ It is an irony of history that the first and greatest success of scientists in persuading governments of the indispensability of modern scientific theory to society was in the war against fascism. It… Eric Hobsbawm
