The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.
Henry GeorgeThe protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.
Henry GeorgeIt is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.
Henry GeorgePoverty is the openmouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough.
Henry GeorgeWhat has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.
Henry GeorgeThe man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.
Henry GeorgeThat which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one.
Henry GeorgeAs 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.
Henry GeorgeCompare 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.
Henry GeorgeThe word capital, as philologists trace it, comes down to us from a time when wealth was estimated in cattle, and a man's income depended upon the number of head he could keep for their increase.
Henry GeorgeThe state, it cannot too often be repeated, does nothing, and can give nothing, which it does not take from somebody.
Henry GeorgeThere are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any better state of society than that which now exists.
Henry GeorgeFor every social wrong there must be a remedy. But the remedy can be nothing less than the abolition of the wrong.
Henry GeorgeIt is but a truism that labor is most productive where its wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.
Henry GeorgeNo 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.
Henry GeorgeAs it becomes more and more difficult to get land, so will the virtual enslavement of the laboring-classe s go on. As the value of land rises, more and more of the earnings of labor will be demanded for the use of land, until finally nothing is left to laborers but the wages of slavery -- a bare living.
Henry GeorgeWhoever 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.
Henry GeorgeWhence 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.
Henry GeorgeIn 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.
Henry GeorgeLet no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.
Henry GeorgeHe who by an exertion of mind or body, adds to the aggregate of enjoyable wealth, increases the sum of human knowledge, or gives to human life higher elevation or greater fullness - he is, in the larger meaning of the words, a " producer," a " working man," a " laborer," and is honestly earning honest wages.
Henry GeorgeMan is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.
Henry GeorgeHow vainly shall we endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punishment of the poorer class of criminals so long as children are reared in the brutalizing influences of poverty, so long as the bite of want drives men to crime.
Henry GeorgeIt is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.
Henry GeorgeThe tolerance of wrong dulls our sense of its injustice. Men may become accustomed to theft, murder, even to slavery - that sum of all villainies - so they see no injustice in it, yet that which is unjust is unjust still.
Henry GeorgeThe methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.
Henry GeorgePassing into higher forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant, and fitfully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man.
Henry GeorgeWhat would happen to the individual if all the functions of the body were placed under the control of the consciousness is what would happen to a nation in which all individual activities were directed by government.
Henry GeorgeThe 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
Henry GeorgeI propose to beg no question to shrink from no conclusion, but to follow truth wherever it may lead.
Henry GeorgeWe have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit.
Henry GeorgeSocial reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.
Henry GeorgeLiberty calls to us again. We must follow her further; we must trust her fully. Either we must wholly accept her or she will not stay. It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they should be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; they must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of Nature.
Henry GeorgeGod showers upon us his gifts-more than enough for all; But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the mire, and rend each other.
Henry GeorgeThere are only three ways by which any individual can get wealth — by work, by gift or by theft. And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much.
Henry GeorgeThe tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive.It is the taking by the community for the use of the community of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained.
Henry GeorgeThe equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.
Henry George