Selected Quotes
from the Writings of Francis Neilson
Compiled by Edward J. Dodson
[P to S]
PAINE, THOMAS
... Paine himself differentiated between natural rights and civil
rights. In his controversy with Burke, Paine says: "Natural
rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence ...
every civil right grows out of a natural right. ..." Paine is
always clear about the difference, but it is not easy for students
reared on modern political history to follow him; one reason for this
being the nature of the conflicts in France and America in which he
took a leading role. They were first and last political conflicts
waged by politicians. That Paine was conscious of this is clearly
shown in his essay called
Agrarian Justice: "It is a position not to be
controverted that the earth in its natural, uncultivated state was,
and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human
race." Here he refers to those rights "which appertain to
man in right of his existence." Furthermore, he distinguishes
land value from improved value; the idea of landed property arose from
the impossibility of separating the improvement made by cultivation
from the earth itself, "but it is nevertheless true, that it is
the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is
individual property." The Eleventh Commandment, pp.
156-157]
Thomas Paine was thirty years old in 1767, when he taught at
Gardiner's School in London. It should not be overlooked that the
letters of Junius, which have been attributed to Paine, also appeared
in that year. For seven years before he sailed for America, Paine had
been at the very center of the Radical uprising in London, and the
thought and style of Common Sense and The Crisis
reveal the true source of their origin -- the English Radical school
revived by John Wilkes. ["The Decay of Liberalism," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, p.135]
Paine met Franklin in London in the years when John Cartwright wrote
his ten letters, which appeared later under the title American
Independence, the Interest and Glory of Great Britain. ["The
Decay of Liberalism," Modern Man and the Liberal Arts,
p.136]
Strangely enough, there was a time in our history when an English
radical came to the assistance of two groups of men of utterly diverse
views, when it was a question of maintaining a British colony or
affirming the English right of having grievances redressed before
granting supply. The man who appeared upon the scene was Thomas Paine,
and he supplies the only case of an efffective radical who ever saw
his ideas triumph. ...It is our good fortune that Paine hewed his own
line and never for a moment changed his character as an English
constitutional radical. ["A Revival of Political Radicalism,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.178]
Few realize the importance of Paine and by what means he educated the
common people of this country in the principles of government which
enabled them finally to throw off the Hanoverian yoke. Both Common
Sense and The Crisis were epoch-making pamphlets, and they
reveal a knowlege of the affairs of humankind that is far beyond
anything produced by our mentors today. ["The Silence of the
Opposition," Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.225]
Thomas Paine, in his observations upon "The French Declaration
of Rights," says in a note:
There is a single idea
which, if it strikes rightly upon the mind, either in a legal or a
religious sense, will prevent any man, or any body of men, or any
government, from going wrong on the subject of religion: which is,
that before any human institutions government were known in the
world, there existed ... a compact between God and man from the
beginning of time; and that as the relation and condition which man
in his individual person stands in towards his maker cannot be
changed by any human laws or human authority, that religious
devotion, which is a part of this compact, cannot so much as be made
a subject of human laws; and that all laws must conform themselves
to this prior existing compact, and not assume to make the compact
conform to the laws which, besides being human, are subsequent
thereto.
Religion did not spring from fear. Its origin came from the soul of
thankful man who worshiped the Provider of the source of his needs who
had given to him, as the classical writes tell us, the earth, the sun,
and the rain for his happiness. Early man knew this far better than
our philosophers. ["The Decline of Civilizations,"Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, pp.273-274]
PEACE MOVEMENTS
Before America entered the War of 1914-18 there were peace societies
in the principal towns of this country, and they were so strong in
membership and so vigorous in their campaigns that I was assured ...
they were solidly behind the President's determination to keep the
United States neutral. For five weeks before the fatal month of April,
1917, I spoke at many peace meetings and found the audiences eager to
keep out of the war. ["Political Movements,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.239]
PHILANTHROPHY
The last half of the nineteenth century witnessed the growth of many
industrial and philanthrophic movements for providing men with
libraries, night schools, co-operative societies, co-partnership
schemes, and other ameliorative expedients in lieu of justice.
The Eleventh Commandment, p.165]
PHYSIOCRATIC THEORY
It was Henry Macleod, the Scottish economist ... who, in his
Elements of Political Economy, gave the clearest rendering of
the physiocratic theory of natural rights. The Eleventh
Commandment, p.151]
PLANCK, MAX
It is to Max Planck tht we must turn if we really desire to know what
the true scientist is seeking.
"We see in all
modern scientific advances that the solution of one problem only
unveils the mystery of another. ...The aim of science is ... an
incessant struggle towards a goal which can never be reached.
Because the goal is of its very nature unattainable. It is something
that is essentially metaphysical and as such is always again and
again beyond each achievement."
...I should like the "progressives" to tell me frankly if I
am to consider seriously this statement from Max Planck, or is it so
contrary to all the ideas held by them that it should be cast aside as
thought unworthly of a scientist? Here is my difficulty: whom as I to
believe -- the scientists or the proponents of the "scientific
method"? ["Science and the Liberal Arts," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, pp.31-33]
PLATO / ON THE INJUSTICES OF THE STATE
The conditions of Athens are laid bare, and not until Socrates rubs
their noses in the mess do they realize how deep the mire of injustice
goes under the fair face of that state. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.76]
So ages ago, justice was tumbling out at their feet. Glaucon and the
others had been looking for something they would not know if they saw
it, and it was not necessary to create the luxurious state. What
chance of recognizing justice had they in a state at fever-heat, if
they could not find her in the simple one? But the creation of the
luxurious state gave Socrates the opportunity he desired of taking the
lid off Athens and exposing her numberless rascalities. There,
injustice in every form ws rampant: slavery, meddlesomeness and
interference, assertions of unlawful authority, rebellious subjects --
"what is all this confusion and delusion but injustice and
intemperance and cowardice and ignorance, and every form of vice?"
he asks. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.81]
PLATO / PRINCIPLES OF THE JUST REPUBLIC
... there are two distinct books in
The Republic, and the task of Socrates, defining justice, is
contained in the first section -- the first four books, which might
have been given the title -- "Justice." The second section,
Books V-X, deals with the construction of the luxurious state. But the
luxurious state is used antithetically, as a terrible example not to
be followed, for the state finally constructed in the second section
is the very reverse of luxurious; it is communistic, and not strictly
that, because the question of the ownership of the land -- private or
communal -- is left open. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.69]
... the conception of justice defined by Socrates was purely
individualistic and utterly foreign to any conception of communism. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.69]
Justice is the true aim of the first section, and not the state,
because the discovery of justice is essential for hte foundation of
the economic state, and its nature and operation will determine the
kind of state to be built. This search for the origin and nature of
justice in the first four books of The Republic, when the
Greek states were tottering, is one of the most vital contributions to
philosophy bequeathed by ancient civilizations. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.71]
PLATO / ON INDIVIDUALISM
The first four books [of
The Republic] reveal justice to be a form of pure
individualism, for individualism, in the sense of a man being and
acting the part of an individual in a free society, must have for an
economic fundamental equality of opportunity to produce food, fuel,
clothing, and shelter. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.82]
PLATO / PURPOSE IN WRITING THE REPUBLIC
The object being justice, not the state. Then he points out the
reason why the analogy is useful to their purpose: the state arises
out of the needs of mankind. Here the state is a mere idea, as Kant
would say. Socrates labours under no delusion, for he knew Athens, and
that was state enough for his experience. Indeed, he starts the new
approach by saying: "Let us begin and create in idea a state."
In idea. The model will be a figment of the imagination, so unlike any
concrete example that the very term state may be an absurd misnomer;
... [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.74]
POLITICIANS / QUALIFICATIONS OF
... anybody can be a politician; no study is required; the
observation of principles would be a waste of time; anybody who can be
nominated and elected can be a legislator. No examination in an
institution of learning is demanded. ...Years ago there was an idea
abroad that such a person should know at least something of the
principles of political economy, but no one now owuld dream of
harbouring such an idea. Political democracy in practice is seemingly
a system which dispenses with endowment and competency; the exceptions
are known and granted.
The Eleventh Commandment, p.183]
The political field is the only one to be found in any department of
life that is without purpose, skill, and discipline. It is said: "No
one knows how to govern; no one knows the function of government:
politicians do not know how." [The Eleventh Commandment,
p.185]
POLYBIUS
Polybius, in his
Histories, tells us:
... We should therefore
not shrink from accusing our friends or praising our enemies; nor
need we be shy of sometimes praising and sometimes blaiming the same
people, since it is neither possible that men in the actual business
of life should always be in the right, nor is it probable that they
should be always mistaken. ...
Such was the attitude of viewing affairs that he maintained when he
wrote what Mahaffy described as "perhaps the greatest universal
history, or history of the civilized world, attempted in old
times." ["The Silence of the Opposition," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, pp.197-198]
POWER / GOVERNMENTAL
The modern legislator
seems to think two wrongs always make a
right, and that there is no better way of reforming abuses than by
government adopting the abuses that it frowns upon, if they be
practiced by what now goes by the term "predatory interests."
[
Man at The Crossroads, p.66]
PRICE, RICHARD
When Price's fame reached America, the United States Congress
beseeched him to settle in this country and to give his assistance in
the regulation of the finances of the newly founded state. As a
political philosopher he is second to none of the period. ["The
Decay of Liberalism,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, pp.139-140]
PRICE / AS A MARKET-CLEARING DEVICE
The demand of consumers for goods depends largely on the price and
the quality of the desired article, and this again depends upon the
purchasing power of the people's money, the purchasing power of the
bill when exchanged for the articles required by the household. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.130]
PRIVILEGE
You cannot grant a privilege to one section of the community with the
certainty that no other section of the community will ask for a like
privilege. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.136]
PRIVILEGE / MASQUERADING AS RIGHTS
most of the rights that we hear about today are not rights at
all; they are merely privileges strictly limited to what is called "high
pressure groups." These controversies are clouded by all the
vapors of sentimentalism and superficial notions of political economy,
[
Man at The Crossroads, p.135]
PRODUCTIVITY
It is true we have perfected machines, but with all the new machines
to aid us, we have discovered no new fundamentals. We move faster,
with greater ease; we see farther; we record earthquakes; we discern
almost the infinitesimal and, for the production of our food, fuel,
clothing and shelter, we have made machines which reduce exertion
almost to a minimum and yet, millions go hungry and ill-clad.
the
more we pride ourselves on our achievements, the more surely poverty
keeps step with progress. [
Man at The Crossroads, p. 86]
PROPERTY / AS WEALTH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
So property is wealth: primarily, food, fuel, clothing and shelter,
and all the labor-products which are accessories in the production and
use of these things. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.63]
PROPERTY / DEFINED
What is property? It is wealth produced by labor, with the assistance
of capital, from land. [
Man At the Crossroads, p.62]
Property is wealth, and wealth is matter moved by labor. The mover of
wealth is the owner of wealth and, as owner of it, he has the right to
bequeath it to anyone or to exchange it with anyone for other wealth.
[Man at The Crossroads, pp.239-240]
The land on which his house is built is not produced by him.
Therefore,
tracts of bare land cannot be property, for they are
not wealth, and were not produced by labor. [Man At The Crossroads,
p.63]
Property in an economic sense refers to what is produced by labour;
that which can be owned, giving its producer right to its use and its
enjoyment. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.88]
PROPERTY / IN LAND, AMONG TRIBAL SOCIETIES
Numbes of the African tribes know that only what a man produces can
be his own, and that he has the right to leave it to his heirs,
exchange it, or give it away. In numbers of the tribes there is no
such thing as private ownership of land; all land is held in
trusteeship by the chief of the tribe. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.42]
PROPERTY / NATIONALIZATION OF
Every State that has made an attempt to nationalize property has been
forced to make an exemption with regard to the almost numberless
articles that are required in daily use by the laborer. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.240]
PROPERTY / RIGHTS TO
Property rights in economics are easily defined, although lawyers
have done everything they could, through the centuries, to sheer off
from the fundamentals of the questions. It is the lawyer who is to
blame for the complicated mess that exists - a mess so murky that it
has completely hidden the bed-rock on which ownership of wealth is
based. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.239]
PROPHETS / AS CONSERVATIVES
The prophet was the rebel, the priest was the Tory, or, to put it
after the English manner, the prophet was the true conservative,
desiring to restore the law and custom of the land, and the priest at
best was the Tory, multiplying forms to the detriment of the substance
of law and custom. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.36]
PROTECTIONISM
It is a species of robbery which is waged under the banner of
patriotism and nationalism. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.141]
POVERTY / CAUSES OF
Before man became so civilized as to be a meek tribute-payer, the
only poverty he was likely to know was that occasioned by drought or
flood. Yet even in such extreme cases of scarcity brought about by
natural causes, he might have had a surplus of his own which would
help him to survive periods of little or no harvest. Surplus taught
him thrift, not only for seed, ftime of ill-fortune also. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.47]
POVERTY / CAUSES OF, FEUDAL BRITAIN
It was a great misconception to treat the so-called Industrial
Revolution as a cause of the impoverishment of the people. ...
depopulation of the countryside was, and had been, taking place and
that the migration of the country men to the towns resulted in a
superabundant labor market, with the result that wages fell as prices
of commodities rose. ["The Conspiracy Against the English
Peasantry,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.85]
POVERTY / CAUSES OF, PERPLEXING TO PHILOSOPHERS
The anachronism of involuntary poverty in a world containing the
complete source of man's material needshas seemed so utterly at
variance with the idea of a bountiful Creator, that great thinkers in
all ages have been not only deeply perplexed at the incongruity, but
urged ever and again to try to find the rason for it. Nothing so
undermines man's faith in God as poverty. The misery and pain it
breeds kill the spirit, and acceptance of it has done more to beget
atheism than all the frnakly materialistic works of nineteenth-century
scientists. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.93]
["The Conspiracy Against the English Peasantry,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.]
POVERTY / ENTRENCHED NATURE OF
there is no hope at all of the poor and needy every escaping
from the grip of poverty, so long as the politician has need of them,,
not only for votes but for appropriations. The poor and needy are the
essential pawns in the game. Furthermore, they must continue over long
periods in their impoverished condition because they are serviceable
for the purposes of oratory. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.183]
POVERTY / SOLUTION TO
If [man] hath the power, through the development of scientific
method, to war upon disease and conquer it, he hath the power, also,
to conquer the problems of ignorance and poverty; but in order to
succeed in doing this, he must treat fundamental economics as a
science, and master the political difficulties of his own creation. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.8]
PRIESTHOOD / APPEARANCE OF
Fear came with legends, and legends brought priests, and then simple,
pristine worship was merged after many generations with amultitudinous
theogony. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.46]
PRIESTHOOD / IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Why should it be different with the priesthood of Israel? When was
there an ancient priesthood that did not want as many of the good
things as it could get? How great the difference was from that early
covenant can be imagined by reading nay of the grievances of the early
prophets. The old, simple, economic covenant which bound the
individual to God was forgotten; a totally new system was substituted.
Probably the new system had been growing up for years, and, as it
grew, the old condition of working the land disappeared.
The Eleventh Commandment, p.191]
PRINCIPLES
It is never too late ... to return to First Principles. A mightly
effort is called for to rehabilitate mankind on an economic basis.
This effort calls for freedom -- freedom to use the earth, freedom to
produce; freedom to do legitimately what one desires with his produce;
to enjoy the gifts of the Creator and enjoying, know the relaxations
which man needs to furnish his mind with thoughts of peace and
kindness, to inspire his soul with the highest ideals. ["Henry
George, The Scholar,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, pp. 80-81]
PROPERTY RIGHTS / TO LAND
It has been demonstrated by many economists that land is not
property, but the source from which property -- wealth -- is produced
by labor, assisted by capital. It would make all the difference in the
world if historians would turn their attention to fundamental
economics before they undertake such a trying task as that of finding
other reasons for the fall of nations than that which Pliny discovered
when he said: "Great estates ruined Italy." ["Toynbee's
Study of History,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.310]
PUBLIC REVENUE / LAND VALUES AS JUST SOURCE OF
The land on which one hundred and thirty millions of people exist
must have sufficient value to yield all that is required in taxation
for the purposes of a sane government and, so long as that source is
there, and is scarcely taxed at all, the land being grossly
undervalued everywhere, it is iniquitous to tax wealth. [
Man at The Crossroads, pp.68-69]
RADICAL LIBERALISM
Anything connected with Socialism or Communism is labelled by loose
thinkers here as "Radical." ...It might aid some of our
presumptuous writers if they were to take the trouble to look into the
history of British politics since the rise of the Whit party so that
they might learn who the Radicals were and what they stood for. ["The
Decay of Liberalism,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.133]
...it is possible today to see the Philosophical Radicals in a new
light. Many of their prophecies have been fulfilled. They pointed out
the dangers that have gathered about parliamentary institutions since
the beginning of the century. Indeed, some of them were seers and
realized that, once the people departed from the Radical road, there
was no choice but to go in the direction of Socialism. It was not
Toryism they feared so much as it was bureaucratic rule. And no one
will deny that today bureaucratic rule is destroying the people
everywhere. ["The Decay of Liberalism," Modern Man and
the Liberal Arts, p.141]
... the first duty of Liberals was to consider the question of
involuntary poverty and the economic causes of it. This was the
imperative of Liberal policy. But the Radicals had lost heart. They
were dismayed at the Boer War, and they felt after the Khaki Election
of 1900 that nothing was to be expected from Balfour's Government. ["The
Decay of Liberalism," Modern Man and the Liberal Arts,
pp.148-149]
When I entered active politics in the year 1902, I soon realized that
my ideas of Liberalism were held by comparatively few members and
candidates. ...Very seldom did I meet a man who was inclined to listen
to the cause of most of these distressing matters. ["The Decay of
Liberalism," Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, pp.150-151]
Liberalism was destroyed from within itself by alien forces that had
used it only for their own purposes. ...Liberalism in nearly all its
essentials was a creed of defiance. Its purpose was to attack the
abuses suffered by the people and to demand that the old law should be
reaffirmed and re-established. ["The Decay of Liberalism,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.161]
There were two words linked together -- social justice --
which I consider did more to vitiate the principles of Liberalism
expounded by Cobden than any others in the vocabulary of party
politics. The use to which they were put became the abracadabra of
Fabian-Liberal platforms. ["The Decay of Liberalism," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, p.168]
The influence of Thomas Spence, William Ogilvie, Thomas Paine and
Patrick Edward Dove -- to name only four of the great individualistic
radicals who made reform possible -- spurred the English people to
those great political efforts, extending over 150 years, which won
back for them freedom from the tyranny of the House of Hanover. ["A
Revival of Political Radicalism," Modern Man and the Liberal
Arts, p.185]
The men who led the movements from the date of the birth of
radicalism were constitutionalists and thorough individualists. ["A
Revival of Political Radicalism," Modern Man and the Liberal
Arts, p.191]
Perhaps one of the most remarkable of our deficiencies is the utter
absence of a spirit of revolt in the masses -- the lack of demand for
the restoration of rights. ...Surely the acid test of the political
virility of a people is whether or not it has the courage to protest.
["The Decline of Civilizations,"Modern Man and the
Liberal Arts, p.259]
REFORM / ECONOMIC
What aims of economic reform in many lands were fostered a hundred
years ago! And now bureaucracy sits safely and tightly upon the throne
made for it by the taxpayers. [
My Life in Two Worlds, p.77]
... the deeper problems, such as national and international economic
questions, threatened to overthrow or subvert all the work of the
reformers. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.165]
REFORM / IN SPARTA, UNDER LYCURGUS
A man of ideas was Lycurgus, but, though he made powerful Spartans
and kept his state disciplined in every department, the Helots, who
made all the reforms possible, groaned under the yoke without hope. "In
Sparta the freeman is more a freeman than anywhere else in the world,
and the slave more a slave." The reforms of Lycurgus endured for
some two hundred years, but they were reforms only and left the
economic basis of the state, the exploitation of the many for the
benefit of the few, intact. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.61]
REFORMERS
The evil of the political system is that it never produced a man who
could save it. There is no room in that system for a savior. All that
the politician of the best type can do within the system, is to carry
on. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.40]
The great difficulty to be faced is that of the social position of
the would-be reformer.
Our reformers know little or nothing
about the poor.
The so-called reforms that they suggest are
sufficient evidence of this. As a rule, they see one specific abuse,
and they go for that, without the slightest idea of what it will mean
to the sufferers if that abuse be reformed. [Man at The Crossroads,
p.193]
They do not realize that the creation of the bureaucrats will,
undoubtedly, increase the expense of government, and throw greater
burdens upon the workers. What is gained in order is lost in
betterment. [Man at The Crossroads, p.194]
... the one-reform men, such as town-planners, profit-sharers,
total-abstainers, education- and slum-reformers, were not looked upon
as safe for forcing the government to deal with the full Cobdenite
policy of thorough economic reform. ["The Decay of Liberalism,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.155]
REFORM / INGREDIENTS NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS
Today our movements languish because the masses have not been told
the reasons for them with the withering pungency that the pamphleteers
aimed at the injustices and imbecilities of the politicians of their
time. ...I believe a movement destitute of a satirist or a poet cannot
be effective, for it is like a knife without an edge. ["The
Silence of the Opposition,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.221]
RELIGION / DEVELOPMENT OF
What is called religion ... seems to be a very late development in
the economic history of man. He had reached quite a high state of
civilization when he worshipped the Creater, the earth, and the son of
the union of the Father (Creator) and Mother (Earth). Other deities
came much later. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.44]
It was gratitude, not fear, that prompted man to worship the first
deity -- the Creator. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.45]
Man, the land animal, the tool-making producer, worshipped first the
Creator who gave him the source from which he obtained his food, and
then his fuel, and then his clothing. Gratitude surely came long
before fear in the scheme of deity-making. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.45]
RELIGION / JUSTICE AND
Nothing but a fundamentally religious institution can offer man the
principles of justice he seeks. It must rid itself of all
participation in politics if it is to succeed in being the dominant
factor in the life of the people. It must be completely free from all
those material interests of the state which have hindered its
progress.
The Eleventh Commandment, p.178]
RELIGION / LACTANTIUS ON
Lactantius, who gave the clearest definition of religion, i.e., that
which seeks to bind man to an invisible God, says that, when man
ceases to be a dumb animal, he "begins to live in conformity with
the will of God, that is, to follow jutice." [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.94]
RENAISSANCE
The Renaissance was not a new birth; it was merelby a feeble attempt
to revive Classicism. It failed because it was bound to fail. Although
the Humanists deluded themselves into thinking that salvation was to
be found in ephemeral schemes for the educative betterment of man,
they failed to realize that man was a land animal and that he could
not live or work without land. ["Henry George, The Scholar,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.79]
RENAN, ERNEST
One of the great thinkers who advocated a United States of Europe was
Ernest Renan. ...It would be impossible to recommend to the people of
our movements a better treatise on the European situation (as it was
before World Wars I and II poisoned the whole European atmosphere)
than this essay, written by a patriotic Frenchman -- one of the most
cultured European scholars of that day. In it Renan calls for an
alliance between France, Germany, and England, but only as a basis for
a European society. ...The argument that he develops is maintained by
exposing the faults on both sides with a candor that is startling in
its exceptional courage. ["Political Movements,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, pp. 234-235]
RENT / EFFECTS, WHEN TREATED AS PUBLIC REVENUE
When there is only one source of revenue, government will be reduced
to a minimum, and politicians will have to work as producers, or as
persons who will render a positive service in science and arts to the
community, when required. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.178]
RESPECT FOR THE WISE
It has taken long centuries to select from the remains of other
civilizations certain men who, as sages, have stood the test of time.
But nobody pays any attention to the wise now. Why? Merely
because they lived in the past and, as things now differ in degree,
all must be different, and what the wise of classical times had to say
about morals, conduct, business, love, hatred, war, peace and wealth,
can have no meaning to the modern. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.59]
RETIREMENT / AND LIFE OUTSIDE THE CITY
It is only since we came to live [at Harbor Acres, on Long Island,
New York] that my mind has been liberated from the bonds of restraint.
Here I have been able to shed the encumbrances civilization inflicts
upon the urban dweller. The telephone rinks perhaps once a day. We see
no evening paper. The work we have to do is so interesting that we
could not spare an hour for television. [
My Life in Two Worlds, p.291]
RIGHTS / AND DUTIES
there are no rights without duties. A right is an obligation
which insures the rights of others. Take away the rights of a thinking
individual and he will have no time to think of duties. Indeed, it may
be said: no rights, no social obligations. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.125]
RIGHTS / ABANDONED UNDER NEWER RELIGIOUS
COVENANTS
New covenants usually consolidate privileges gained by infringing the
rights of the old one. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.10]
RIGHTS / LOSS OF
it was not until he lost his right to use the earth, when the
State born of conquest and robbery was set up, that he discovered he
had lost his right to the full value of his produce. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.128]
Neither state nor citizen can deprive men of their rights; all it can
do is to deprive a man of the exercise of his rights. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.97]
RIGHTS / NATURAL
Natural right is prior to and independent of the State. It is the
prince who makes the law, for the protection of his State. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.106]
The question of natural rights stood as a stumbling block for years
and, while that obstacle lay in their path, they could make no
progress whatever. Hence, the desire of the Fabians and Socialists to
abolish natural rights, clear them out of the way and, in their place,
confer the granting of "rights" of any and every description
upon the State. [Man At The Crossroads, pp.108-109]
Rights, natural rights, inhere in the individual. They are born with
him. Rights are created, not conferred. All the State can do is to
grant, permit or confer privileges upon individuals or bodies of
individuals. [Man At The Crossroads, p.115]
The primary rights of man are three: (1) the natural right of a man
to himself, which includes the rights of freedom of thought, freedom
of speech, and freedom of action. Without the right to himself,
thought, speech and action cannot be used in his own defense nor as
aids to his sustenance. (2) The natural right to use the earth, for
the reason that he cannot draw food, fuel, clothing, and shelter from
any other source. The earth is indispensable to him, as it is to any
other animal. (3) The natural right to the product of his labor. [Man
at The Crossroads, p.127]
RIGHTS / NATURAL, PRECEDE THE STATE
Ancient man['s] ... rights antedate the state, for his rights are
economic, or the magistrate bgefore he could freely use the
capitalist, or the magistrate before he could freely use the earth to
produce his sustenance. State rights, which are really not rights at
all and ought to be called state privileges, must have come
comparatively late in the development of man. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.46]
RIGHTS / STRUGGLE FOR DISSIPATED IN 20TH CENTURY
Is it merely coincidence that with the extension of the franchise and
the growth of paternalistic and meddlesome departments and
bureaucracies there is to be noticed a complete disappearance of those
fundamental questions which burned so fiercely a generation ago? [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.138]
RIGHTS / UPHOLDING OF
My contention is as follows: conscious of the value of his own
rights, a man cannot fail to protect them by assuring his fellows that
he places an equal value on their rights and that it is his duty,
arising from his knowledge of the value of his own right, to act with
regard to the rights of others as if they were his own to protect. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.125]
ROGERS, THOROLD
Professor Thorold Rogers, in his book,
Cobden and Modern Political Opinion, unfolds the story of the
conditions that prevailed in England when the Reform Bill was carried
in 1832. This work is invaluable for a proper understanding of how the
principles of the Whigs and Radicals were finally merged into the
doctrine of Liberalism. ["The Decay of Liberalism," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, p.132]
According to Thorold Rogers, the serf had not less than twelve acres
of arable land and privileges in his lord's forests. But the slave was
economically helpless because he was landless. ["The Decline of
Civilizations,"Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.257]
ROMAN EMPIRE
The price paid by Rome for her civilization of glory and splendour
must be reckoned in debt pillars, hungry freeman, slaves (native and
foreign), branding irons, and chains. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.90]
Only in a world worn out by war and Roman ravage could a state linger
on for centuries, dying by inches. It took six hundred years to find
an undertaker: Alaric. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.91]
ROBINSON, DR.
Take such a work at
The Decline and Fall of the Hebrew Kingdoms, by Dr. Robinson,
published in the Clarendon Bible Series, Oxford; compare it with even
the best of the work done by scholars of the last century, and it
seems to be ancient history from an altogether new standpoint. It
gains tremendously in distinction because of the way in which it
treats the economic problems which were the deep concern of the
prophets. The Eleventh Commandment, p.188]
ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION
the list of racketeering acts of this government, if given in
length, would require a volume. Anyway, there is not one thing that
the government has blamed business for doing in a nefarious manner,
that it has not perpetrated day in and day out for the past five
years. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.75]
Racketeering is practiced upon defenseless people in the form of
exacting tribute. The racketeering of the government, as practiced
upon industry, differs in no vital respect, safe one
, for it
must be understood that the intention of the government in its method
of practicing this science is made clear now; to single out the people
of means (which in America is taken to be those who are industrious)
and exact tribute from them, which, in other words, means that they
are to be penalized for their industrial exertions. [Man at The
Crossroads, p.81]
No one thinks it strange, in what is supposedly a democratic country,
legislating through the media of parliamentary institutions, that only
a very small percentage of the men in league with the administration
have any commercial knowledge or business reputation. The vast
majority are mere odds and ends of law schools who would certainly
never think of going to Congress if they had shown the competence and
ability to succeed at the Bar. [Man at The Crossroads, p.83]
Of course, nobody now believes for a moment that the "emergency"
which came when he took office in 1933, amounted to anything more than
a peculiarly shallow pretext for building up a bureaucracy of enormous
strength, and gathering about him an army of yes-men. [Man at The
Crossroads, p.167]
It is property the advisors of the President seem to be after; the
property of private individuals, for they find that confiscation
practiced through the process of income tax penalties may not yield
sufficient to keep the poor and needy on their voting register as long
as they desire. [Man at The Crossroads, p.210]
Whereas Lincoln and his party emancipated the Black Slaves, the
present Executive and his party are enslaving the White folks. In
plain terms, it comes to this: that if the government is to remain
solvent, all labor - men, women, yes, and children, too - will have to
produce the wealth that will meet this bill. [Man at The
Crossroads, pp.256-257]
RUSSELL, BERTRAND
Russell says: "To lose faith in knowledge is to lose faith in
the best of man's capacities." ... True enough, but there are
many kinds of knowledge, and the knowledge which is called scientific
would not fill a very large volume if it were divested of hypothetical
aids and heuristic fictions. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.19]
SALVATION
Perhaps the only chance that is left is to revive the religious and
economic conditions of the early culture. Depopulation of the cities,
as a result of a return to the land, might lead to salvation --
economic and spiritual. ["The Decline of Civilizations,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.270]
SAMUEL, HERBERT
The firt work to be written upon the principles of Liberalism came
from the pen of Herbert Samuel, now Lord Samuel.
Liberalism, Its Principles and Proposals was published in
1902... The author told us that the purpose of it was to produce in a
compact form the leading principles on which the action of the Liberal
party was based. ["The Decay of Liberalism," Modern Man
and the Liberal Arts, p.146]
SCARCITY / FRANS OPPENHEIMER ON
"Since I have shown that, even, at the present time, all the
ground is not occupied economically, this must mean that it has been
pre-empted politically. Since land could not have acquired 'natural
scarcity,' the scarcity must have been legal. This means that the land
has been pre-empted by a ruling class against its subject class and
settlement prevented. Therefore, the state as a class state can have
originated in no other way than through conquest and subjugation."
[
The Eleventh Commandment, p.129]
SCHOPENHAUER, ARTHUR
Schopenhauer, who has been considered a second-rate philosopher by a
few of our modern instructors, is now shown, by some of the deepest
students of our day, to be not only a man whose erudition was
extraordinary but also one of the most profound thinkers of the
nineteenth century. To him history was far more than a mere record of
kings and politicians, the intrigues of statesmen, the trafficking of
diplomatists, and the stories of their wars; history to him was what
it was to the Greeks -- a vessel into which were poured the joy and
sorrow of the life of the people. ["The Conspiracy Against the
English Peasantry,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.108]
SCHROEDINGER, ERWIN
J.W.N. Sullivan says that when he asked Schroedinger "whether he
thought the present great creative activity in science was some sort
of substitute for the creative activity, now so sadly lacking, that
used to go into art and religion, he [Schroedinger] replied ... that
such a view altogether exaggerated the importance of science. ..."We
get used to theories we don't understand, and forget their
contradictions quite cheerfully," Schroedinger remarked. ["Science
and the Liberal Arts,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.28]
SCIENCE / AND PURSUIT OF TRUTH
Presumably, economic truth, so simple as the fact that man is a land
animal, cannot be determined by an isolated individual. Early man had
to wait until a group of sociologists or philosophers appeared upon
the scene before he could say with any degree of certainty at all,
that he depended upon the earth for the gratification of his desires
and needs. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.103]
Surely the scientific method in quest of the origin of disease should
consider what civilizations of economic dislocation have done to break
down mankind's powers of resistance and make man the prey of disease.
...When will the scientific method be applied to the economic causes
of the tragedies of existence, viz. poverty, crime, and disease? [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.18]
SCIENTIFIC METHOD / AND EDUCATION
... from the day when devotion to the "scientific method"
was introduced into the classroom of colleges, an educated person has
been looked upon as a curiosity and is still regarded as a highbrow. ["Science
and the Liberal Arts,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.2]
SECURITY / AND LABOR-SAVING INVENTIONS
No matter how many labor-saving appliances are invented, none of
these things gives [man] the leisure to explore the cravings of the
spirit, and he finds it just as hard to make a living today as it was
in the time of his grandfather. Many tell me that it is harder and
that there is less chance of security. ["Science and the Liberal
Arts,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.37]
SELF-SUFFICIENCY
the reason for this disinclination to fend for oneself on a few
acres is not economic but social. It is said the country is too dull
for the town-bred man and, when winter comes and snow keeps him penned
up during the long nights, he does not know what to do with himself.
As for living with books, and complaining that the night is not long
enough, such a thing would be unheard of now. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.250]
[M]en who know the secret of the means of life need not gifts, for
they can produce wealth. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.59]
SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD
When I reached London in 1897, Shaw was dramatic critic for the
Saturday Review. At that time he was deep in the study of Henry
George's Progress and Poverty. He has attributed his interest in
fundamental economics t this work, although nowhere in his writing
does he reveal an understanding of George's definitions of economic
terms. He gave it up because it would take too long to put the
theories of George into practice, and he confesses he turned to Karl
Marx's Das Kapital because it would accomplish the same end in a
shorter time. [
My Life in Two Worlds, pp.240-241]
SKEPTICISM
The practice of a healthy skepticism is necessary for the man who has
some respect for his own character and his spiritual integrity. If he
would protect himself from the virus of false reports and deliberate
mendacity, he must weigh carefully the statements publicized by the
governments, their press and radios, and even those which come from
the pulpits and lecture halls of the universities. ["The Silence
of the Opposition,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.197]
Without knowledge it is utterly unreasonable to expect the healthy
skepticism that is necessary to defeat the purposes of the war-making
politicians. ["The Silence of the Opposition," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, p.214]
It may be that a knowledge of the past will make men conscious of the
necessity for healthy skepticism in all things, and in a few
generations the blight of ignorance may be eradicated. What is wanted
is a spiritual purge to eliminate from the body politic the ideas that
have been rampant in men's minds and which have worked for their
destruction. ["The Silence of the Opposition," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, p.218]
SLAVERY
Slavery was responsible for checking man's desire for cleanliness and
battering down the gates of his resistance. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.7]
SLAVERY / AND THE STATE
the relics of no civilization show that the freeman suffered
restrictive laws to the extent that the freeman suffers under the
State today. Most of the restrictions of which we know, that were
imposed in classical times, fell upon the slave, and he was called a
slave. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.26]
... after the development of political liberty it was left to modern
statesmen to discover a new way of making slaves, and that other
necessary steps in the progress of humanity, as set down in the
treaties, have caused such suffering in all parts of the world that
many think the horrors of primitive warfare must have been short and
mild by comparison. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.164]
SLAVERY / ORIGINS IN CONQUEST AND TRIBUTE
Exploitation of labour began with conquest when tribute was exacted
by conquerors for the use of land. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.43]
SLAVERY / NOT PREVENTED BY THE FRANCHISE
God and Moses ... did not abolish slavery merely by pasting over it a
political label, franchise, and that way make the labourer think he
was any the less a slave. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.7,8]
SMITH, ADAM / AS A PHILOSOPHER
It is a pity that
The Theory of Moral Sentiments was withdrawn from publication
and that it was overshadowed by the author's great work, The
Wealth of Nations. That the latter should come from the same mind
as the former is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary performances
of a philosopher. The Wealth of Nations gains enormously when
it is considered with the philosophy of the earlier work. The
Eleventh Commandment, p.110]
Adam Smith came to the conclusion that "civil government, so far
as it is instituted for the security of property, is, in reality,
instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those
who have some property against those who have none at all." ["The
Conspiracy Against the English Peasantry," Modern Man and the
Liberal Arts, p.121]
SOCIALISM
The question of natural rights stood as a stumbling block for years
and, while that obstacle lay in their path, they could make no
progress whatever. Hence, the desire of the Fabians and Socialists to
abolish natural rights, clear them out of the way and, in their place,
confer the granting of "rights" of any and every description
upon the State. [
Man At The Crossroads, pp.108-109]
Gronland tells us that the State and organized society are one
and the same, which must mean
that organized society and the
State represent an harmonious whole functioning in accordance with
laws enacted for the benefit of the people as a whole. Whether this be
true or not can be determined by considering the economic differences
which exist between producers and bureaucrats. This has always been
the acid test of the validity of such notions. Herein lies the fatal
flaw in the theory of Socialism as it is laid down in the proposals
and conceptions of the scheme for the equal benefit of all. How can
there be equal benefit when producers have to work to supply the needs
of the non-producers? [Man At The Crossroads, p.112]
SOCIALISTS
There is a striking difference between the addle-headed "liberal"
Socialist of today and his fellow of a generation ago. Most of those
who flirted with such notions before the turn of the century lived
long enough to see the errors of their thought. Those of today are
piling error upon error, and may not live long enough to verify the
economic validity or expediency of their error-born theories. [
Man at The Crossroads, p.241]
SOCIOLOGISTS
There is one thing the sociologist has always forgotten in this
business of data-collecting, and that is that humanity is not an
industry. None of the ideas or conceptions they hold are applicable to
masses of men and women. They are individuals - each man, each woman,
is an individual - and no matter how the sociologists strive, along
with the bureaucracy, to shape them into an homogeneous mass, they
must fail because of the infinite variety of likes and dislikes of the
herd. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.100]
And the most farcical thing about it is that the sociologists have
the temerity to call their business a science. [Man At The
Crossroads, p.101]
...a united social body is indispensable to the legal sociologist; he
cannot make a move without it; not as a family, father, or chief, came
the mere creation of the intellect to labour and produce, but as a
member of a society, a social trade union, from which he had to get a
card before he could get a right. What right? Right to do what? What
were the rigghts he lost, and, when he entered the social environment,
regained? [The Eleventh Commandment, p.126]
SPECIALIZATION
specialization and compartmentalizing workers make it difficult
to see clearly that it is labor, even though we call it by the other
name consumers, that employs capital. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.95]
SPENGLER, OSWALD
Within a few short yers after Spengler's work was published, his
warnings became realities we had to acknowledge. Caesarism was upon us
before we knew it. How incredibly short the time has been since the
chief nations of Europe and of this hemisphere looked to the future
with hope! Within three-quarters of a century the whole condition of
the world has been changed. ["The Decline of Civilizations,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.258]
SPENGLER, OSWALD / ON THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS
Spengler says: "To ascribe social purposes to Jesus is a
blasphemy. His occasional utterances of a social kind, so far as they
are authentic and not merely attributed sayings, tend merely to
edification. They contain nothing whatever of new doctrine, and they
include proverbs of the sort then in general currency." ...It is
blasphemy to ascribe mere social purposes; that is, using social
purposes with a nineteenth-century connotation. But Spengler is surely
wrong when he says that Jesus's utterances of a social kind contian
nothing whatever of new doctrine. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.245]
SPIRITUALITY
the Bible is the only work which contains everything worth
knowing. No branch of literature that can be thought of has been
omitted from its books. It contains even the rudiments of natural
science; and in the Book of Job, there is the undercurrent of the
notions of the rationalists.
And as for philosophy, Ecclesiastes
covers in short compass the alpha and omega for those who ponder the
great problem of a way of life. [
My Life in Two Worlds, pp. 294-295]
SPIRITUALITY / AMONG ANCIENT SOCIETIES
In all worships the Creator provided the source of food before
creating man. No creator, not one, in any of the ancient worships made
man before the earth was made. All was done for man. The primitive
creature had a sounder economic understanding of the wisdom of
creation than have most of our modern philosophers. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.52]
Giving thanks, grace, is the oldest ceremony, and all the ritual of
the ancients ... concerned with selecting, gathering, preparing,
cooking, and serving food, bears witness to the sacred fact that
worhship began when the active factor in production, man, used the
passive factor, land, for the satisfaction of his desires and needs. [The
Eleventh Commandment, pp. 53-54]
STATE, THE / DEFINED
The word "State" is difficult enough to define even when
the order is simply and the area of jurisdiction comparatively small.
It is impossible to think of a State without speculating upon
the reason for its creation. Really there is no such thing as a State
qua "State," for we are told that the State is the body
politic organized for supreme rule and government. But this definition
fits no State within our knowledge. It refers to an ideal State; not
to the State, in practice, which, by no stretch of the imagination,
can be held to an organization of the body politic for supreme rule. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.46]
STATE, THE / LEGITIMATE FUNCTION OF
The State is a guardian of the rights of the individual, and the
State has no other function. When the State, or the directors of it,
assume to control the legitimate efforts and expressions of its
people, it becomes very soon merely a sum of legalized relations, and
a government composed of a body of influential politicians who desire
to control the activities of the community. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.116]
STATE, THE / PARASITIC CLASS INEVITABLE
it is utterly impossible to set up even a beneficent State,
without creating the evil of a parasitic class. It may be said that
governors serve in directing, and controlling, and preserving order,
in maintaining the army, the navy, and the police. This is true
enough; they do so in the beneficent State. But they, as governors,
re, nevertheless, parasites, for they add nothing whatever to the
production of wealth, and they ought never to be included in such
services as those which minister to the legitimate needs and desires
of man. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.32]
It should be plain to the thinking man that the evil of setting up a
parasitic class, which began with the creation of the first State
(call it a bureaucracy or what you will) has never changed in any
particular, save that of becoming greater and more and more iniquitous
in its greed for power. [Man At The Crossroads, p.35.]
So long as the "political means," government, was conducted
by astute men who kept expenses low and opposed the growth of the
bureaucracy, the "economic means" could be exploited with as
little pain as the maintenance of the system permitted. But when the
political means was submerged in ever-growing bureaucracies, both the
exploiters and the exploited were crushed without the slightest
sentimental compunction. [The Eleventh Commandment,
pp.132-133]
STATE, THE / CAUSES OF DECAY
the most noticeable symptom of decay of the State, that
observers describe, is the form of anarchy which affects nearly all
classes from the underworld to the very powers, legislative and
judicial, to which we should look for safeguarding the best interests
of society. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.30]
It is the same old story of the growth of the state: the exploitation
of the many for the benefit of the few. And, like all states,
[Hammurabi] toppled from the height of its grandeur when slavery
reached the maximum, undermined by the economic cancer upon which it
rose to greatness. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.58]
... every political machine of the past failed to save the state; as
it grew in size and complexity, it became top-heavy and could not be
supported by the impoverished and rebellious people. ...That strange
hope, always unfounded, that one civilization will escape the
consequences of economic evil practised by its predecessor, always
blurs the vision of the well-intentioned investigator. [The
Eleventh Commandment, p.153]
STATE, THE / ENEMY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
if we have reached the stage when it is absolutely necessary
for a bureaucracy to do the thinking for individual producers and
consumers, then man has ceased to be what he was! The State is the
enemy of man. The State has undertaken to do practically all the
thinking for him, at least so far as all necessaries are concerned,
and has consequently reduced him to a mere body afflicted with
inanition of thought for himself. [
Man at The Crossroads, p. 88]
There never was a State whose chief interest was the preservation of
the wealth of its people. Such a thing is impossible under a political
system.
All are crying out for privileges and licenses, but
scarcely anyone shows the slightest desire to have rights restored. [Man
At The Crossroads, p.107]
To raise so ponderous and massive a thing as the state to protect
rights of no value seems strange, though men have done strange things
to protect themselves. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.126]
The government is what the electorate permits it to be. ...The
taxpayer is now the servant of the state. He toils for a bureaucracy
that does not spin. He is no longer in command. ...All the warnings
expressed by the Founding Fathers and many of their followers are
forgotten. Truth to tell, they were extraordinary prophets, for many
of their predictions have come true. ...changes have taken place which
are so thoroughly opposed to the ideas of Washington and Jefferson
that thoughtful men despair of the people ever regaining control of
their government. ["The Silence of the Opposition," Modern
Man and the Liberal Arts, pp.206-207]
Whatever it is that undermines the vigor and resolution of the mass
of the people, there is undoubtedly something organic that is wrong,
and no injections of the serum of Fascism or Bolshevism can renew the
tissue which formerly gave power to the people. ["The Decline of
Civilizations,"Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.254]
STATE, THE / LEGITIMATE BASE FOR ACCORDING TO
PLATO
The basis of this state must be common ownership of land. The
business of supplying the demands for food, dwellings, and clothing is
not handicapped at the outset by landlords, solicitors, or bailiffs.
The husbandman, the builder, the weaver, and the shoemaker are not so
far retricted; as producers they have equal opportunity to use the
source from which they will produce the supplies. Rent, taxes,
tariffs, and charitable contributions have not been invented yet. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.]
STATE, THE / MODERN PROBLEMS OF
...it is commonplace criticism that the bureaucratic and juristic
state is no longer serviceable. It is overgrown, top-heavy, not worth
its cost, and, worse, gives no hope at all of producing a statesman
who might reform it from within. [
The Eleventh Commandment, p.124]
STATE, THE / ORIGINS OF
The pet theory that the family is the foundation of the State can
only be imagined by looking back on the mammoth, the monkey or the
mouse, and considering any one of them as likely creatures, because of
their parenthood, for forming a State. It is, of course, very hard to
imagine our standing with the first man, in the midst of his family,
and looking forward to the time when somebody would invent the State
for him. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.11]
early man had no one to advise him, no one to provide for him,
and no one to restrict his movement. He was left entirely to himself.
He was without politician, without police, without social or State aid
in any particular. [Man At The Crossroads, p.12]
There would never have been a State
unless there was something
worth taking: the property of the producer. [Man At The Crossroads,
p.61]
Perhaps it would be as well if the builders of the new conceptions
took the trouble to find out what was basically wrong with the old
before the crash comes. [The Eleventh Commandment, p.128]
It is a long leap historically, as old records reveal, from men born
in economic freedom to the slave basis of the state. [The Eleventh
Commandment, p.158]
There are people now publishing ponderous tomes who seem to imagine
that the group preceded the individual. History, however, must begin
with man and his needs: no man, no community; no community, no state;
no state, no civilization. This seems to me the sequence which should
be adopted by historians who inquire into the growths of
civilizations. ["Toynbee's Study of History," Modern Man
and the Liberal Arts, p.303]
STOCK MARKET CRASH OF 1929
When the crash came in 1929, I was quite unprepared to meet it; and
if I had been prepared, I would probably have but put off, because my
American friends in London (where I was at the time) never dreamed it
would be so severe. I was advised to hold on, although my better sense
told me that things were going to be worse. [
My Life in Two Worlds, p.132]
SUPERSTITION
It seems to me that the term "superstition," as it was used
by the agnostics of the eighteenth century, has been misapplied by our
sponsors of the "scientific method," with the result thta it
has engendered a prejudice. And it may be pointed out that the
religious field is only one in which "superstition" is
cultivated. The political field is so full of superstition, as all
history shows, that it has become a byword. ["Science and the
Liberal Arts,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.7]
SURVIVAL / DEPENDENT ON LEARNING
The earth itself is not only the storehouse of every need of man, it
is also the storehouse of everything that can do him harm.
But
experience, which was essential, taught him what was to be avoided and
why he should seek shelter from the elements, and discover regions
where he might live in security. [
Man At The Crossroads, p.3.]
We know why certain creatures disappeared from the earth. The altered
conditions of terrain, climate, and food supply, account largely for
their disappearance. But man surmounted not only all these
difficulties; he also overcame the innumerable vicissitudes which
beset him in pillage, slavery, and war.
man is here, and man is
proving slowly but surely that he can conquer disease. [Man At The
Crossroads, pp.5-6]
natural fears, if they may be so called, forced [man] to think
of means of defense, and the occupation of searching for food was made
doubly intensive by having to think constantly of how he could
preserve himself against attack. [Man At The Crossroads, p.17]
SURVIVAL / RELATIONSHIP TO LABOR
Man must labor to satisfy his desires and needs, and in this labor he
becomes an artist, by providing himself first with sustenance, with
the expenditure of the least exertion. Indeed, we might say that every
achievement that man has wrought springs from the fact that he was the
only animal to learn that he could repdocue his own food. ["Toynbee's
Study of History," ["Toynbee's Study of History,"
Modern Man and the Liberal Arts, p.294]
Man cannot be understood unless he is regarded as a land animal who
must use the source the Creator has provided for his sustenance. All
history arises from man's primal activity; in truth, here is the
genesis from which the historian must work. However much they may
differ in their early development and afterwards, to the cultural rise
of the best-ordered state, they all begin in the same way. ["Toynbee's
Study of History," Modern Man and the Liberal Arts,
p.295]
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