Great Throughts Treasury

"There is a danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism."

"Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action and when there is correct thought, right action will follow."

"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 other have no right."

"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."

"The state, it cannot too often be repeated, does nothing, and can give nothing, which it does not take from somebody."

"Superior want of conscience… is often the determining quality which makes a millionaire out of one who otherwise might have been a poor man."

"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. The reaction must come. The tower leans from its foundation, and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe."

"The press rules the people, and capital rules the press."

"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."

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

"Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes."

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

"What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. "

"To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be."

"Social 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. "

"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."

"It is true that wealth has been greatly increased, and that the average of comfort, leisure, and refinement has been raised; but these gains are not general. In them the lowest class do not share. I do not mean that the condition of the lowest class has nowhere nor in anything been improved; but that there is nowhere any improvement which can be credited to increased productive power. I mean that the tendency of what we call material progress is in nowise to improve the condition of the lowest class in the essentials of healthy, happy human life. Nay, more, that it is still further to depress the condition of the lowest class. The new forces, elevating in their nature though they be, do not act upon the social fabric from underneath, as was for a long time hoped and believed, but strike it at a point intermediate between top and bottom. It is as though an immense wedge were being forced, not underneath society, but through society. Those who are above the point of separation are elevated, but those who are below are crushed down."

"More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We 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. Failing these, civilization must pass into destruction. It cannot be maintained on the ethics of savagery. For civilization knits men more and more closely together, and constantly tends to subordinate the individual to the whole, and to make more and more important social conditions."

"I ask no one who may read this book to accept my views. I ask him to think for himself. Whoever, laying aside prejudice and self-interest, will honestly and carefully make up his own mind as to the causes and the cure of the social evils that are so apparent, does, in that, the most important thing in his power toward their removal. This primary obligation devolves upon us individually, as citizens and as men. Whatever else we may be able to do, this must come first. For "if the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the ditch." Social 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. Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness."

"In truth the right to the use of land is not a joint or common right, but an equal right; the joint or common right is to rent, in the economic sense of the term. Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. The function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights of individuals."

"The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical."