Henry George Quotes About Wealth
-
The 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.
→ -
The ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general stock.
→ -
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.
→ -
What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.
→ -
There 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.
→ -
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.
→ -
It is as to whether its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentleman for his own amusement is not.
→ -
When we consider that labor is the producer of all wealth, is it not evident that the impoverishment and, dependence of labor are abnormal conditions resulting from restrictions and usurpations, and that instead of accepting protection, what labor should demand is freedom. That those who advocate any extension of freedom choose to go no further than suits their own special purpose is no reason why freedom itself should be distrusted.
→ -
At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that laborsaving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past... From Progress and Poverty, To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment.
→ -
He 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.
→
Related Authors
-
Adam Smith Philosopher -
George Stigler Economist -
Agnes de Mille Choreographer -
Edward Bellamy Author -
Albert Einstein Theoretical Physicist -
John Stuart Mill Philosopher -
-
Ida Tarbell Author -
William Graham Sumner Political scientist -
Eugene V. Debs Political leader -
Theodore Roosevelt 26th U.S. President -
Friedrich August von Hayek Economist -
John Maynard Keynes Economist -
David Ricardo Economist -
Jacob August Riis Journalist -
William Stanley Jevons Economist -
Milton Friedman Economist -
Samuel Gompers Labor Union Leader -
Leo Tolstoy Writer -
Herbert Spencer Philosopher