Quotes from R. H. Tawney

Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans.

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

The characteristic virtue of Englishmen is power of sustained practical activity and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles.

The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.

A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.

As long as men are men, a poor society cannot be too poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too rich to have need to seek it.

When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.

Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are in common.

If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.