E. F. Schumacher Quotes - Page 2

Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.

Many of them had a better time than they ever had in their lives because they were discovering the new freedom - the less you need, the freer you become.

There can be nothing sacred in something that has a price.

Many people love in themselves what they hate in others

If greed were not the master of modern man, how could it be that the frenzy of economic activity does not abate as higher standards of living are attained, and that it is precisely the richest societies which pursue their economic advantage with the greatest ruthlessness?

There is incredible generosity in the potentialities of Nature. We only have to discover how to utilize them.

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.

There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: 'Halt! We have enough'? There is none.

A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called violent.

It is doubly chimerical to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict.

We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature.

That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of 'bread and circuses' can compensate for the damage done-these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence-because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.

Is there enough to go around? What is enough? Who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues economic growth as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of enough.

The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.

Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.

Not mass production but production by the masses.

We think work with the brain is more worthy than work with the hands. Nobody who thinks with his hands could ever fall for this.

It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.

No one is really working for peace unless he is working primarily for the restoration of wisdom.

The richer a society, the more impossible it becomes to do worthwhile things without immediate pay-off.

Scientific and technological "solutions" which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction.

To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence.

Our intentions tend to be much more real to us than our actions, and this can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding with other people, to whom our actions tend to be much more real than our intentions.

The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.

Real life consists of the tensions produced by the incompatibility of opposites, each of which is needed