Yanis Varoufakis quotes

Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist, academic, and former politician, widely recognized for his role during the Greek financial crisis. As Greece’s Minister of Finance, he became known for his opposition to austerity measures imposed by international creditors. He continues to influence economic debates and progressive movements in Europe. Here are 16 of his quotes:

(The Eurozone) resembles a fine riverboat that was launched on a still ocean in 2000. And then the first storm that hit it, in 2008, started creating serious structural problems for it. We started leaking water. And of course, the people in the third class, as in the Titanic, start feeling the drowning effects first.

Yanis Varoufakis

Europe in its infinite wisdom decided to deal with this bankruptcy by loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders ... What we've been having ever since is a kind of fiscal waterboarding that has turned this nation into a debt colony.

Yanis Varoufakis

I mean, the enclosures in Britain would never have happened without the king's army and without state brutality for pushing peasants off their ancestors' land and creating the commodification of labor, the commodification of land which then gave rise to capitalism.

Yanis Varoufakis

If you take an iPhone apart, every single technology in it was developed by some government grant, every single one.

Yanis Varoufakis

I would like to note that I have long considered myself a libertarian Marxist. This causes laughter and outrage from both Marxists and libertarians because they accuse me of being a hypocrite. If you are libertarian you cannot be a Marxist and if you are a Marxist you cannot be libertarian, they say. I see it differently.

Yanis Varoufakis

Politics, I now understand, is at its best when it enlightens us via an opponent's insight.

Yanis Varoufakis

...Julian [Assange]... created the technology that allowed the outsiders to get a glimpse within...and this is why he's being persecuted this way and one of the worst aspects of this persecution from a feminist perspective is that he's been accused of a crime for which he's never been charged, that turns progressives against feminists and feminists against progressives. This attempt by the establishment to turn progressives against themselves in order to prosecute someone who has... revealed their crimes is a heinous crime in itself...

Yanis Varoufakis

...faced with a choice between an agreement that is to the advantage of the peoples of Europe and one that bolsters their own power within the EU institutions at the expense of Europe's social economies, the Brussels establishment, and the powerful politicians behind them, will choose the latter every time.

Yanis Varoufakis

On the other hand, you can chose to be an insider, to play the game... if you chose to be an insider you'll be given information that outsiders don't have, you'll be given... an opportunity... to make some... small tiny changes within the inside, but the one rule that you must respect, is that insiders do not tell outsiders the truth, and they do not turn against other insiders...

Yanis Varoufakis

...negotiations will be an exercise in futility and frustration. Barnier's two-phase negotiation announcement amounts to a rejection of the principle of ... negotiation. He is, effectively, saying to you: First you give me everything I am asking for unconditionally (Phase 1) and only then will I hear what you want.

Yanis Varoufakis

On Modern capitalism & Amazon.

Yanis Varoufakis

While bringing about radical change is never easy, it is now abundantly clear that everything could be different. There is no longer any reason why we should accept things as they are.

Yanis Varoufakis

These lazy answers always flourish during periods of deflation. Deflation, ladies and gentlemen, was always going to be the result of this particular design of the euro and deflation begets monsters: it was Mussolini, it was Hitler; now it is [a new fascist international].

Yanis Varoufakis

We need to change the circumstances of people's lives, so we need investments. We need to push investment up because investment is what we need to create the good quality jobs that will create the incomes that will stop deflation: the markets won't do it on their own.

Yanis Varoufakis