Henry George Quotes - Page 2

Poverty is the openmouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough.

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

No person, I think, ever saw a herd of buffalo, of which a few were fat and the great majority lean. No person ever saw a flock of birds, of which two or three were swimming in grease, and the others all skin and bone.

Whence shall come the new barbarians? Go through the squalid quarters of great cities, and you may see, even now, their gathering hordes! How shall learning perish? Men will cease to read, and books will kindle fires and be turned into cartridges.

That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one.

Blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

I propose to beg no question to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead.

As it is with an individual, so it is with a nation. One must produce to have, or one will become a have-not.

The great work of the present for every man, and every organization of men, who would improve social conditions, is the work of education the propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that anything else can avail. And in this work every one who can think may aid first by forming clear ideas himself, and then by endeavoring to arouse the thought of those with whom he comes in contact.

It is not from top to bottom that societies die; it is from bottom to top.

Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge.

Whoever becomes imbued with a noble idea kindles a flame from which other torches are lit, and influences those with whom he comes in contact, be they few or many. How far that influence, thus perpetuated, may extend, it is not given to him here to see.

The fundamental principle of human action, the law, that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion

No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.

Compare society to a boat. Her progress through the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew, but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This will be lessened by any expenditure of force in fighting among themselves, or in pulling in different directions.

For every social wrong there must be a remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong.

That alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring which is right.

In all the new states of the Union, land monopolization has gone on at an alarming rate, but in none of them so fast as in California, and in none of them, perhaps, are the evil effects so manifest.

Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of nature, but to the injustice of man.

As Mazzini said ... it is around the standard of duty rather than around the standard of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights of man. And herein may we see the deep philosophy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as themselves. In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to solve social problems and carry civilization onward.

It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is theirs.