Barter, truck, and exchange is a principle of economic behavior dependent for its effectiveness upon the market pattern. A market is a meeting place … - Karl Polanyi

The history of mankind and the place of the economy in it, is not, as the evolutionists would have it, an account of unconscious growth and organic continuity. Such an approach would necessarily obscure some aspects of economic development vital to men in the present phase of transition. For the dogma of organic continuity must, in the last resort, weaken man's power of shaping his own history.

The habit of looking at the last ten thousand years as well as at the array of early societies as a mere prelude to the true history of our civilization which started approximately with the publication of the Wealth of Nations in 1776, is, to say the least, out of date.

one of the book’s enduring contributions — its focus on the institutions that regulate the global economy — was directly linked to Polanyi’s multiple exiles. His moves from Budapest to Vienna to England and then to the United States, combined with a deep sense of moral responsibility, made Polanyi a kind of world citizen.