Quotes from 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.

How many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?

Property in land is as indefensible as property in man.

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.

Let no man imagine that he has no influence.

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.

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

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

Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.

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

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

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

There is danger in reckless change but greater danger in blind conservatism.

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

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.

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

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

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

He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.

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

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.

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.

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.

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.