Theo Patterson

“If our starting point is a respect for nature and people, diversity is an inevitable consequence. If technology and the needs of the economy are our starting point, then we have what we are faced with today—a model of development that is dangerously distanced from the needs of particular peoples and places and rigidly imposed from the top down.”
― Helena Norberg-Hodge, Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

“It was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world (p.119).”
― Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History

“we prefer to erase the realities of slavery, expropriation, and colonialism from the history of capitalism, craving a nobler, cleaner capitalism.”
― Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History

“Many historians have called this the age of 'merchant' or 'mercantile' capitalism, but 'war capitalism' better expresses its rawness and violence as well as its intimate connection to European imperial expansion. War capitalism, a particularly important but often unrecognized phase in the development of capitalism, unfolded in constantly shifting sets of places embedded within constantly changing relationships. In some parts of the world it lasted into the nineteenth century.”
― Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History