Henry George Quotes

The 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 George

One sex of voice in public matters, and that we could in no way so increase the attention , the intelligence and the devotion which may be brought to the solution of social problems as by enfranchising our women . ~ Henry George

Forgiveness is the noblest vengeance. ~ Henry George Bohn

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. ~ Henry George

The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will. ~ Henry George

Let 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 George

...the history of man is but a history of difficulties overcome – of mysteries made plain...and that Progress, incessant and continued, is the great law of the human race'
Dr Henry George Charles Clarke, 1847.
Quoted in Champion of the Quarterdeck (2017) ~ Dr Henry George Charles Clarke

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. ~ Henry George

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

A good, very good, not to say admirable schoolmaster, but then he is only a schoolmaster. ~ Henry George

He that is master of himself will soon be master of others. ~ Henry George Bohn

How 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 George

Business and action strengthen the brain, but too much study weakens it. ~ Henry George Bohn

My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both. ~ Henry George

If you would have the slave show the virtues of the freeman, you must first make him free. ~ Henry George

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. 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 George

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

I hold with Henry George, that at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong. ~ Alfred Russel Wallace

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. ~ Henry George

In church it occurred to me that it is time for the public to hear that the giant evil and danger in this country, the danger which transcends all others, is the vast wealth owned or controlled by a few persons. Money is power. In Congress, in state legislatures, in city councils, in the courts, in the political conventions, in the press, in the pulpit, in the circles of the educated and the talented, its influence is growing greater and greater. Excessive wealth in the hands of the few means extreme poverty, ignorance, vice, and wretchedness as the lot of the many. It is not yet time to debate about the remedy. The previous question is as to the danger - the evil. Let the people be fully informed and convinced as to the evil. Let them earnestly seek the remedy and it will be found. Fully to know the evil is the first step towards reaching its eradication. Henry George is strong when he portrays the rottenness of the present system. We are, to say the least, not yet ready for his remedy. We may reach and remove the difficulty by changes in the laws regulating corporations, descents of property, wills, trusts, taxation, and a host of other important interests, not omitting lands and other property. ~ Rutherford B. Hayes

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. ~ Henry George

The value of a thing is the amount of laboring or work that its possession will save the possessor. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. ~ Henry George

The people must think because the people alone can act. ~ Henry George

Men like Henry George [ the pioneer of land value taxation] are rare, unfortunately. One cannot imagine a more beautiful combination of intellectual keenness, artistic form, and fervent love of justice. ~ Albert Einstein

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

Courage ought to have eyes as well as arms. ~ Henry George Bohn

Material progress does not merely fail to relieve poverty, it actually produces it. This association of progress with poverty is the great enigma of our times. It is the riddle that the sphinx of fate puts to our civilization. And which NOT to answer is to be destroyed. ~ Henry George

Nature, time and patience are three great physicians. ~ Henry George Bohn

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

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. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

The error I found in the philosophy of Henry George was its cocksureness, its simplicity, and the small value that it placed upon the selfish motives of men. The doctrine was a hang-over from the seventeenth century in France, when the philosophers had given up the idea of God, but still thought that there must be some immovable basis for man's conduct and ideals. In this dilemma they evolved the theory of natural rights. If 'natural rights' means anything it means that the individual rights are to be determined by the conduct of Nature. But Nature knows nothing about rights in the sense of human conception. ~ Clarence Darrow

There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself. ~ Henry George

Where the conditions to which material progress... are most fully realized... where wealth is greatest... we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most enforced idleness... Material progress does not merely fail to relieve poverty - it actually produces it... This association of progress with poverty is the great enigma of our times. It is the central fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world and with which statesmanship and philanthropy and education grapple in vain. ~ Henry George (Progress And Poverty, 1884)

I ask no one who may read this book to accept my views. I ask him to think for himself. ~ Henry George

Abolish all taxation save that upon land values. ~ Henry George

Few there are that will endure a true friend. ~ Henry George Bohn

Friends are like fiddle strings; they must not be screwed too tight. ~ Henry George Bohn

Every potter praises his own pot. ~ Henry George Bohn

Lawyers and painters can soon change white to black. ~ Henry George Bohn

The 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 George

God 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 George

Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat. ~ Henry George Bohn

There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any better state of society than that which now exists. ~ Henry George

An inch in a man's nose is much. ~ Henry George Bohn

Give and spend And God will send. ~ Henry George Bohn

How can a man be said to have a country when he has not right of a square inch of it. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

I am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

The 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

There is nothing can equal the tender hours
When life is first in bloom,
When the heart like a bee, in a wild of flowers,
Finds everywhere perfume;
When the present is all and it questions not
If those flowers shall pass away,
But pleased with its own delightful lot,
Dreams never of decay. ~ Henry George Bohn

Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each. ~ Henry George

Discovery can give no right of ownership, for whatever is discovered must have been already here to be discovered. If a man makes a wheelbarrow, or a book, or a picture, he has a moral right to that particular wheelbarrow, or book, or picture, but no right to ask that others be prevented from making similar things. Such a prohibition, though given for the purpose of stimulating discovery and invention, really in the long run operates as a check upon them. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

Good luck reaches farther than long arms. ~ Henry George Bohn

He preacheth patience that never knew pain. ~ Henry George Bohn

Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism. ~ Henry George

The lawyer's pouch is a mouth of hell. ~ Henry George Bohn

Passing into higher forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant, and fitfully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man. ~ Henry George

Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse; the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

If you would wish the dog to follow you, feed him ~ Henry George Bohn

He who commences many things finishes but few. ~ Henry George Bohn

The investment of money is a banker's business. ~ George Garr Henry

Good is good, but better carrieth it. ~ Henry George Bohn

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. ~ Henry George

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. ~ Henry George

He that ceaseth to be a friend never was a good one. ~ Henry George Bohn

You must come to Lockleigh again," said Miss Molyneux, very sweetly, to Isabel, ignoring this remark of Isabel's friend. Isabel looked into her quiet eyes a moment, and for that moment seemed to see in their grey depths the reflexion of everything she had rejected in rejecting Lord Warburton - the peace, the kindness, the honour, the possessions, a deep security and a great exclusion. She kissed Miss Molyneux and then she said: "I'm afraid I can never come again. ~ Henry James

Why do you need everyone married?" Christopher has said to him angrily, when Henry has asked about his son's life. "Why can't you just leave people alone?"
He doesn't want people alone. ~ Elizabeth Strout

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Nothing can illustrate these observations more forcibly, than a recollection of the happy conjuncture of times and circumstances, under which our Republic assumed its rank among the Nations; The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment... have had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society. At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be entirely their own.

[Circular to the States, 8 June 1783 - Writings 26:484--89] ~ George Washington

We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments ... Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbor's footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master's, although it is but his own. ~ George MacDonald

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. ~ George F. Kennan

There's never a garden in all the parish but what there's endless waste in it for want o' somebody as could use everything up. It's what I think to myself sometimes, as there need nobody run short o' victuals if the land was made the most on, and there was never a morsel but what could find it's way to a mouth. ~ George Eliot

One hardly knows which is the more appalling: the abjectness of the credulity or the flippancy of the scepticism.
- Shaw's Preface ~ George Bernard Shaw

After years of touring, my voice has gotten a lot stronger. I used to just blow out after two or three shows, so I've definitely trained my voice, because I can now hit notes that I couldn't hit before. ~ George Clarke

I think in rural settings, people have a different appreciation for animals than might the city dweller. In parts of India where poisonous snake bite is common, people have a much different value system. I live in a city. I'm not thinking about wolves, lions, etc. ~ Henry Rollins

I was afraid that if I closed my eyes, I might never open them again, only ... well ... dawn came after all. ~ George R R Martin

They make things up." "They do," said Maester Aemon, "but even the most fanciful song may hold a kernel of truth. Find that truth ~ George R R Martin

As much as Henry Kissinger wanted to attribute historical movement to impersonal forces, he too conceded to "the difference personalities make". ~ Walter Isaacson

It is not observed in history that families improve with time. ~ George William Curtis

Consider just a few of the expressions that fall under the umbrella ARGUMENT IS WAR, collected by the linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson.
Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target. I demolished his argument. I've never won an argument with her. You don't agree? Okay, shoot! If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. She shot down all of my arguments.
Or the many variations of LOVE IS A JOURNEY:
Our relationship has hit a dead-end street. It's stalled; we can't keep going the way we've been going. Look how far we've come. It's been a long, bumpy road. We can't turn back now. We're at a crossroads. We may have to go our separate ways. The relationship isn't going anywhere. We're spinning our wheels. Our relationship is off the track. Our marriage is on the rocks. I'm thinking of bailing out. ~ Steven Pinker

a proof that good books, no more than good men, do always survive the bad. ~ Henry Fielding

Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored. ~ George Sanders

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for he lives out of an eternity which includes all time. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors ... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same. ~ George Orwell

Fire consumes, but cold preserves. ~ George R R Martin

When I was 10 there wasnt trampolines and cartoon charaters, I never went to Chuck E Cheese! My mom said 'You wanna see a mouse pull the refrigerator Out!' ~ George Lopez

I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face! ~ George Eliot

A willingness to engage in the give and take of argument displays a commitment to cognitive egalitarianism - the proposition that all people should be treated as intellectual equals, and that no individual can legitimately claim a privileged immunity from the burden of proof. ~ George H. Smith

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it. ~ George Washington

Prague is not, strictly speaking, travel writing but it is, among other things, an excellent example of what travel writing is becoming, if indeed it hasn't already done so ... People are no longer so easily satisfied by the mere travel impressions of some outsider much like themselves. Instead they gravitate towards writers who actually have lived not simply in, but inside, a location for an extended period, as one lives inside one's clothes. ~ George Fetherling

I like to quote myself frequently and often, it makes me sound much more intelligent than I actually am. ~ George Bernard Shaw

When age is jocond it makes sport for death.
[When age is jocund, it makes sport for death.] ~ George Herbert