World System Quotes

“Inequality and poverty, unhealth and no wealth are hand in hand.
And if we are all born equal that should be true in all lands.
We cannot divide the world between poor and rich countries.
It's like saying the ones are good, the others are junkies.
That can only increase more prejudice, miseries and sorrow.
Turning the wheel today it will lead to a better tomorrow.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, The Mysterious Murder of Marilyn Monroe

“It took the Afro-Asian giant several centuries to digest all that it had swallowed, but the process was irreversible. Today almost all humans share the same geopolitical system (the entire planet is divided into internationally recognised states); the same economic system (capitalist market forces shape even the remotest corners of the globe); the same legal system (human rights and international law are valid everywhere, at least theoretically); and the same scientific system (experts in Iran, Israel, Australia and Argentina have exactly the same views about the structure of atoms or the treatment of tuberculosis).”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“Most economic histories of the "world" not only omit most extra-European production and exchange (even most of that outside West Europe or even northwest Europe); they neglect the participation of the productive and exchange activities of extra-European countries in the European, not to say world, process of accumulation and development. Moreover, they disregard the part that these productive and exchange relations played in the developing world system.”
― André Gunder Frank, World Accumulation 1492-1789

“The world system wide reality is the competitive dog-eat-dog war of all against all (à la Hobbes), in which only the few can win and the many must lose. And so it has been for millennia, thanks to the world system's unequal structure and uneven process, which Wallerstein helps us identify.”
― André Gunder Frank, The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand?

“Joblessness releases you from the world system”
― Sunday Adelaja