Top 120 David Graeber Quotes (2024 Update)
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David Graeber Quote: “How inevitable, really, were the type of governments we have today, with their particular fusion of territorial sovereignty, intense administration and competitive politics? Was this really the necessary culmination of human history?”

101. “How inevitable, really, were the type of governments we have today, with their particular fusion of territorial sovereignty, intense administration and competitive politics? Was this really the necessary culmination of human history?”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “There are many problems with this argument. We’ll start with the most obvious. The idea that our current ideals of freedom, equality and democracy are somehow products of the ‘Western tradition’ would in fact have come as an enormous surprise to someone like Voltaire.”

102. “There are many problems with this argument. We’ll start with the most obvious. The idea that our current ideals of freedom, equality and democracy are somehow products of the ‘Western tradition’ would in fact have come as an enormous surprise to someone like Voltaire.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Could there be anything more demoralizing than having to wake up in the morning five out of seven days of one’s adult life to perform a task that one secretly believed did not need to be performed.”

103. “Could there be anything more demoralizing than having to wake up in the morning five out of seven days of one’s adult life to perform a task that one secretly believed did not need to be performed.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “A fact-finding commission is a way of telling the public that the government is doing something it is not. But a large corporations will behave exactly the same way, if, say, there are revealed to be employing slaves or child laborers in their garment factories or dumping toxic waste.”

104. “A fact-finding commission is a way of telling the public that the government is doing something it is not. But a large corporations will behave exactly the same way, if, say, there are revealed to be employing slaves or child laborers in their garment factories or dumping toxic waste.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “It’s not entirely surprising, then, that the first historical evidence we have for the notion that certain categories of people really ought to be working at all times, even if there’s nothing to do, and that work needs to be made up to fill their time, even if there’s nothing that really needs doing, refers to people who are not free: prisoners and slaves, two categories that historically have largely overlapped.11.”

105. “It’s not entirely surprising, then, that the first historical evidence we have for the notion that certain categories of people really ought to be working at all times, even if there’s nothing to do, and that work needs to be made up to fill their time, even if there’s nothing that really needs doing, refers to people who are not free: prisoners and slaves, two categories that historically have largely overlapped.11.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Economies around the world have, increasingly, become vast engines for producing nonsense.”

106. “Economies around the world have, increasingly, become vast engines for producing nonsense.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Spending all day in a sterile office environment, I’m too mentally numb to do anything but consume meaningless media,” he says.”

107. “Spending all day in a sterile office environment, I’m too mentally numb to do anything but consume meaningless media,” he says.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Scholars tend to demand clear and irrefutable evidence for the existence of democratic institutions of any sort in the distant past. It’s striking how they never demand comparably rigorous proof for top-down structures of authority. These latter are usually treated as a default mode of history: the kind of social structures you would simply expect to see in the absence of evidence for anything else.”

108. “Scholars tend to demand clear and irrefutable evidence for the existence of democratic institutions of any sort in the distant past. It’s striking how they never demand comparably rigorous proof for top-down structures of authority. These latter are usually treated as a default mode of history: the kind of social structures you would simply expect to see in the absence of evidence for anything else.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “A first step towards a more accurate, and hopeful, picture of world history might be to abandon the Garden of Eden once and for all, and simply do away with the notion that for hundreds of thousands of years, everyone on earth shared the same idyllic form of social organization.”

109. “A first step towards a more accurate, and hopeful, picture of world history might be to abandon the Garden of Eden once and for all, and simply do away with the notion that for hundreds of thousands of years, everyone on earth shared the same idyllic form of social organization.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care or assistance from their communities. It is as if we have collectively acquiesced to our own enslavement.”

110. “We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care or assistance from their communities. It is as if we have collectively acquiesced to our own enslavement.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Fascination with the question of social inequality was relatively new in the 1700s, and it had everything to do with the shock and confusion that followed Europe’s sudden integration into a global economy, where it had long been a very minor player.”

111. “Fascination with the question of social inequality was relatively new in the 1700s, and it had everything to do with the shock and confusion that followed Europe’s sudden integration into a global economy, where it had long been a very minor player.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “No matter how much workers may have been conditioned in time discipline by primary schooling, they will see the demand to work continually at a steady pace for eight hours a day regardless of what there is to do as defying all common sense – and the pretend make-work they are instructed to perform as absolutely infuriating.27.”

112. “No matter how much workers may have been conditioned in time discipline by primary schooling, they will see the demand to work continually at a steady pace for eight hours a day regardless of what there is to do as defying all common sense – and the pretend make-work they are instructed to perform as absolutely infuriating.27.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Yet even in the best of cases, the need to be on call, to spend at least a certain amount of energy looking over one’s shoulder, maintaining a false front, never looking too obviously engrossed, the inability to fully collaborate with others – all this lends itself much more to a culture of computer games, YouTube rants, memes, and Twitter controversies than to, say, the rock ‘n’ roll bands, drug poetry, and experimental theater created under the midcentury welfare state.”

113. “Yet even in the best of cases, the need to be on call, to spend at least a certain amount of energy looking over one’s shoulder, maintaining a false front, never looking too obviously engrossed, the inability to fully collaborate with others – all this lends itself much more to a culture of computer games, YouTube rants, memes, and Twitter controversies than to, say, the rock ‘n’ roll bands, drug poetry, and experimental theater created under the midcentury welfare state.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “For the moment, it would appear to be a stand-off. The mainstream Left largely controls the production of humans. The mainstream Right largely controls the production of things.”

114. “For the moment, it would appear to be a stand-off. The mainstream Left largely controls the production of humans. The mainstream Right largely controls the production of things.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “In most wealthy countries, the current crop of people in their twenties represents the first generation in more than a century that can, on the whole, expect opportunities and living standards substantially worse than those enjoyed by their parents. Yet at the same time, they are lectured relentlessly from both left and right on their sense of entitlement for feeling they might deserve anything else. This makes it especially difficult for younger people to complain about meaningless employment.”

115. “In most wealthy countries, the current crop of people in their twenties represents the first generation in more than a century that can, on the whole, expect opportunities and living standards substantially worse than those enjoyed by their parents. Yet at the same time, they are lectured relentlessly from both left and right on their sense of entitlement for feeling they might deserve anything else. This makes it especially difficult for younger people to complain about meaningless employment.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Dionysius warns us that we cannot begin to understand how symbols work until we rid ourselves of the notion that divine things are likely to be beautiful.”

116. “Dionysius warns us that we cannot begin to understand how symbols work until we rid ourselves of the notion that divine things are likely to be beautiful.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “The problem is, the moment one starts framing things in terms of debt, people will inevitably start asking who really owes what to whom.”

117. “The problem is, the moment one starts framing things in terms of debt, people will inevitably start asking who really owes what to whom.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “If 1 percent of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the free market” reflects what they think is useful or important.”

118. “If 1 percent of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the free market” reflects what they think is useful or important.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “That indigenous Americans lived in generally free societies, and that Europeans did not, was never really a matter of debate in these exchanges: both sides agreed this was the case.”

119. “That indigenous Americans lived in generally free societies, and that Europeans did not, was never really a matter of debate in these exchanges: both sides agreed this was the case.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “This fact alone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears to have been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical, conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified with the European Enlightenment as well.”

120. “This fact alone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears to have been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical, conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified with the European Enlightenment as well.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “God and Man were inseparable companions. One day God said to Man: why don’t you go walk around on earth for a while so we can find some new topics for conversation? – beginning of a Malagasy folktale.”

121. “God and Man were inseparable companions. One day God said to Man: why don’t you go walk around on earth for a while so we can find some new topics for conversation? – beginning of a Malagasy folktale.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Managerialism has become the pretext for creating a new covert form of feudalism, where wealth and position are allocated not on economic but political grounds – or rather, where every day it’s more difficult to tell the difference between what can be considered ‘economic’ and what is ’political.”

122. “Managerialism has become the pretext for creating a new covert form of feudalism, where wealth and position are allocated not on economic but political grounds – or rather, where every day it’s more difficult to tell the difference between what can be considered ‘economic’ and what is ’political.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “One might ask, how could that most basic element of all human freedoms, the freedom to make promises and commitments and thus build relationships, be turned into its very opposite: into peonage, serfdom or permanent slavery? It happens, we’d suggest, precisely when promises become impersonal, transferable – in a nutshell, bureaucratized.”

123. “One might ask, how could that most basic element of all human freedoms, the freedom to make promises and commitments and thus build relationships, be turned into its very opposite: into peonage, serfdom or permanent slavery? It happens, we’d suggest, precisely when promises become impersonal, transferable – in a nutshell, bureaucratized.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “Keynesian orthodoxy started from the assumption that capitalist markets would not really work unless capitalist governments were willing effectively to play nanny: most famously, by engaging in massive deficit “pump-priming” during downturns.”

124. “Keynesian orthodoxy started from the assumption that capitalist markets would not really work unless capitalist governments were willing effectively to play nanny: most famously, by engaging in massive deficit “pump-priming” during downturns.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “We are projects of collective self-creation.”

125. “We are projects of collective self-creation.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “The end result was that, just as Socialist regimes had created millions of dummy proletarian jobs, capitalist regimes somehow ended up presiding over the creation of millions of dummy white-collar jobs instead.”

126. “The end result was that, just as Socialist regimes had created millions of dummy proletarian jobs, capitalist regimes somehow ended up presiding over the creation of millions of dummy white-collar jobs instead.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “One of the puzzling things about all the theories about the origins of money that we’ve been looking at so far is that they almost completely ignore the evidence of anthropology. Anthropologists do have a great deal of knowledge of how economies within stateless societies actually worked.”

127. “One of the puzzling things about all the theories about the origins of money that we’ve been looking at so far is that they almost completely ignore the evidence of anthropology. Anthropologists do have a great deal of knowledge of how economies within stateless societies actually worked.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “We will suggest that there is a reason why so many key Enlightenment thinkers insisted that their ideals of individual liberty and political equality were inspired by Native American sources and examples. Because it was true.”

128. “We will suggest that there is a reason why so many key Enlightenment thinkers insisted that their ideals of individual liberty and political equality were inspired by Native American sources and examples. Because it was true.”

— David Graeber

David Graeber Quote: “The one thing we can be confident of is that history is not over, and that wherever the most exciting new ideas of the next century come from, it will almost certainly be from someplace we don’t expect.”

129. “The one thing we can be confident of is that history is not over, and that wherever the most exciting new ideas of the next century come from, it will almost certainly be from someplace we don’t expect.”

— David Graeber

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