John Ruskin Quotes About Politics

Quotes about: Politics

• You may either win your peace or buy it: win it, by resistance to evil; buy it, by compromise with evil.

  John Ruskin

  Peace, Winning, Evil

  John Ruskin (2015). “The Two Paths”, p.160, John Ruskin

• Life without industry is guilt, and industry without art is brutality.

  John Ruskin

  Life, Art, Political

  "Lectures on Art: Delivered Before the University of Oxford in Hilary Term, 1870".

• Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Book, Writing

  St. Mark's Rest preface (1877)

• The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

  John Ruskin

  Lying, Essence, Political

  John Ruskin (1910*). “The Complete Works of John Ruskin”

• Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

  John Ruskin

  Long, Political, Wish

  Unto This Last Essay 3 (1862)

• Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.

  John Ruskin

  Education, School, Diversity

  Unto This Last Essay 2 (1862)

• Production does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable; and the question for the nation is not how much labour it employs, but how much life it produces.

  John Ruskin

  Political, Doe, Politics

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.269, University of Virginia Press

• But I beg you to observe that there is a wide difference between being captains or governors of work, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, because you are general of an army, that you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins; (if it fight for treasure or land); neither, because you are king of a nation, that you are to consume all the profits of the nation's work.

  John Ruskin

  Kings, Fighting, Army

  John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.307, Courier Corporation

• Borrowers are nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is mainly done and all unjust war protracted.

  John Ruskin

  Money, War, Evil

  John Ruskin (1866). “The crown of wild olive”, p.22

• How false is the conception, how frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but its being, was impossible..... There is no such thing in the universe. There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only for our heaviest punishment.

  John Ruskin

  Stars, Men, Sea

  John Ruskin “The stones of Venice (cont'd) Seven lamps of architecture. Lectures on architecture and painting, delivered at Edinburgh in Nov. 1853. An inquiry into some of the conditions at present affecting the study of architecture in our schools”

• We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men.

  John Ruskin

  Men, Names, Giving

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.180, University of Virginia Press

• ... no human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice.

  John Ruskin

  Men, Justice, Political

  John Ruskin (1872). “"Unto this Last": Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy”, p.21

• In health of mind and body, men should see with their own eyes, hear and speak without trumpets, walk on their feet, not on wheels, and work and war with their arms, not with engine-beams, nor rifles warranted to kill twenty men at a shot before you can see them.

  John Ruskin

  War, Eye, Men

  John Ruskin (2014). “Praeterita”, p.380, Everyman's Library

• The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

  John Ruskin

  Education, Mean, Government

  John Ruskin “Fors clavigera”

• The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

  John Ruskin

  Political, Slavery, Politics

  John Ruskin (1866). “The Crown of Wild Olive: Three Lectures on Work, Traffic and War”, p.113

• Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.

  John Ruskin

  Giving Up, Men, Titles

  1880 Open letter to EnglishTrades Unions, 29 Sep.

• What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses?

  John Ruskin

  Horse, Book, Thinking

  John Ruskin (2001). “Sesame and Lilies”, p.43, Electric Book Company

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