Hilaire Belloc Quotes About Liberalism

Quotes about: Liberalism

Slowly but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the slave, leaving the rich man apart and free. All industrial civilization is clearly moving towards the re-establishment of the Servile State.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Moving, Men

Hilaire Belloc (2009). “Essays of a Catholic”, p.167, TAN Books
The smaller man approaching our modern banking system, which controls all issue of credit and therefore pretty well all our industrial and commercial activities, is not what the controllers of that credit call "interesting." He borrows with difficulty and upon high terms, and must pledge security out of all proportion to that which his richer rival has to put down.

Hilaire Belloc

Men, Issues, Interesting

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.101, TAN Books
When the mass of men are dispossessed - own nothing - they become wholly dependent upon the owners; and when those owners are in active competition to lower the cost of production the mass of men whom they exploit not only lack the power to order their own lives, but suffer from want and insecurity as well.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Order

Hilaire Belloc (2017). “The Great Heresies”, p.110, Ignatius Press
When the mass of families in a State are without property, then those who were once citizens become virtually slaves. The more the State steps in to enforce conditions of security and sufficiency; the more it regulates wages, provides compulsory insurance, doctoring, education, and in general takes over the lives of the wage-earners, for the benefit of the companies and men employing the wage-earners, the more is this condition of semi-slavery accentuated.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Steps
Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Political, World

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.102, TAN Books
Communism worked honestly by officials devoid of human frailties and devoted to nothing but the good of its slaves, would have certain manifest material advantages as compared with a proletarian wage-system where millions live in semi-starvation, and many millions more in permanent dread thereof. But even if it were administered thus Communism would only produce its benefits through imposing slavery.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Benefits, Slavery
We may not say to the poor: "You have a right to fight the rich merely because they are rich and in order to make yourselves less poor." We may say: "You have a right to fight to prevent the conditions of your life becoming inhuman," but we may not say, "You have a right to fight merely because you desire to have more and your opponent to have less."

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Fighting, Order
Even if the wealth and power be well distributed throughout a community, its members will not be happy unless they are inwardly so, and obviously where the distribution is bad, where the few have a vast superfluity and the many are consumed by anxiety or want, or where a few controllers can exercise their will over the many, society has failed, even though its total wealth and power be increased.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Exercise, Community
Capitalism had arisen through the misuse and exaggeration of certain rights, notably the right of property - the basis of economic freedom - and the right of contract, which is one of the main functions of economic freedom. Therefore, even under Capitalism, so long as the old principles were remembered it was possible to recall the principles whereby Society had once been sane and well ordered.

Hilaire Belloc

Rights, Long, Principles
Consider in what way the industrial system developed upon capitalist lines. Why were a few rich men put with such ease into possession of the new methods? Why was it normal and natural in their eyes and in that of contemporary society that those who produced the new wealth with the new machinery should be proletarian and dispossessed?

Hilaire Belloc

Eye, Men, Ease
To control the production of wealth is to control human life itself. To refuse man the opportunity for the production of wealth is to refuse him the opportunity for life; and, in general, the way in which the production of wealth is by law permitted is the only way in which the citizens can legally exist.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Opportunity, Men

Hilaire Belloc (1970). “Belloc: A Biographical Anthology”
But though Usury is in itself immoral, and justly condemned by every ethical code, its chief and worst defect in the particular case we are now examining, the growth of Capitalism and its increasing proletariat, is the centralization of irresponsible control over the lives of men: the putting power over the proletariat into the hands of a few who can direct the loans of currency and credit without which that proletariat could not be fed and clothed and maintained in work.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Hands

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.96, TAN Books
The very large units of production and exchange have access to credit on a large scale, sometimes without any cover at all, merely upon the prospect of their success, and always upon terms far easier than are open to their smaller rivals. It is perhaps on this line of easier credit that large capital today does most harm to small capital, drives it out and ruins it.

Hilaire Belloc

Doe, Credit, Rivals

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.101, TAN Books
Had there been any existent vital and energetic institution left in Society after the Reformation for the use of small property in coordinated form-that is, in combination, so that the average man's holding could be put to useful purpose in company with the holdings of a great number of other men of his own sort, the new evils would not have arisen.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Average

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.103, TAN Books
The larger the unit of capital present, the easier the transaction called emission of credit. Centralized lending of this kind (which is today universal) actively promotes the absorption of the small man by the great, the reduction of small property owners to a proletarian condition.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Credit

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.97, TAN Books
The society of Christendom and especially of Western Christendom up to the explosion, which we call the Reformation, had been a society of owners: a Proprietarial Society. It was one in which there remained strong bonds between one class and another, and in which there was a hierarchy of superior and inferior, but not, in the main, a distinction between a restricted body of possessors and a main body of destitute at the mercy of the possessors, such as our society has become.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Strong, Class

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.84, TAN Books
... But as a Godless greed pursued its career from excess to excess, it provoked a sort of twin hostile brother, equally Godless, born in the same atmosphere of utter disregard for the foundational virtues of humility and charity. This hostile twin brother of Capitalism was destined to be called Communism, and is today setting out to murder its elder.

Hilaire Belloc

Brother, Humility, Careers
In the form of security and sufficiency for the men who labor to the profit of others, and in the form of registering and controlling them in the form of an organized public supervision of their labor, slavery is already afoot. When slavery shall succeed it will succeed through the acquiescence of those who will be enslaved, for they will prefer sufficiency and security with enslavement, to freedom, responsibility, insecurity and the threat of insufficiency.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Responsibility, Men

Hilaire Belloc (2009). “Essays of a Catholic”, p.13, TAN Books
The larger unit can borrow more easily in proportion than the smaller. It can especially tap bank credit more easily and bank credit is, to-day, the chief factor in economic activity of all kinds.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Credit, Politics

Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.34, IHS Press
The worship of the nation has been able to make men tolerate under its authority what they could never have tolerated from princes: a submission to rule, which, through sumptuary laws on food and drink, through conscription, through a cast-iron system of compulsory instruction for all on State ordered lines, and through a State examination at the gate of every profession, has almost killed the citizen's power to react upon that which controls him, and has almost destroyed that variety which is the mark of life.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Law
Wherever the Industrial system has reached its second generation it is threatened by two mortal perils. The first is the demand by an organized proletariat for sustenance without relation to the product of its labor; a demand which threatens the very existence of PROFIT (on the necessary presumption of which Capitalism reposes). The second, and immediately graver danger is that of a revolt for the confiscation of the means of production.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Mean, Two
In the same way the eminence attaching to the mere possession of great wealth disappoints us nine times out of ten, especially if the wealth has been accumulated rapidly. For great wealth is accumulated rapidly by cunning or chance, or a mixture of the two. Cunning has nothing to do with high qualities; it is rather a presumption against them; while chance has nothing to do with them either. Therefore it is that men are always complaining after meeting So-and-so, that he seemed to be astonishingly stupid, though he made a million in ten years and started as a pauper.

Hilaire Belloc

Stupid, Men, Years
The machine does not control the mind of man, though it affects the mind of man; it is the mind of man that can and should control the machine.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Men, Mind

Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.32, IHS Press
The term "Socialism" becomes a common label for the various theories of attack upon the principle of property, the various policies of communal control at the expense of the family and individual freedom.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Principles, Labels

Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.116, TAN Books
The terror in which English capitalists now stand of organized proletarian resistance gives to the naturally protected craft organizations the power to receive the wages they demand. They act as they have been trained to act by capitalist society, which denies the doctrine of the Just Price, which proclaims work to be an evil and the goal of human endeavor to be the avoidance of it; which puts it up as an ideal that individuals should get as much money as they possibly can out of their fellows by any means in their power.

Hilaire Belloc

Wisdom, Mean, Organization

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Born: July 27, 1870
Died: July 16, 1953
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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