Economy Quotes - Page 23

• For suppose that every tool we had could perform its task, either at our bidding or itself perceiving the need, and if-like the statues made by Dædalus or the tripods of Hephæstus, of which the poet says that "self-moved they enter the assembly of the gods" - shuttles in a loom could fly to and fro and a plectrum play a lyre all self-moved, then master-craftsmen would have no need of servants nor masters of slaves.

  Aristotle

  Self, Play, Bidding

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• We must speak first about the division of land and about those who cultivate it: who should they be and what kind of person? We do not agree with those who have said that property should be communally owned, but we do believe that there should be a friendly arrangement for its common use, and that none of the citizens should be without means of support.

  Aristotle

  Wisdom, Believe, Mean

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• To seek the greatest good is to live well, and to live well is nothing other than to love God with the whole heart, the whole soul, and the whole mind: It is therefore obvious that this love must be kept whole and uncorrupt, that is temperance; it should not be overcome with difficulties, that is fortitude, it must not be subservient to anything else, that is justice; it must discriminate among things so as not to be deceived by falsity or fraud, that is prudence.

  Saint Augustine

  Wisdom, Heart, Justice

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• Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms.

  Saint Augustine

  Wisdom, Taken, Justice

  Saint Augustine of Hippo, Catholic Way Publishing (2015). “The City of God”, p.161, Catholic Way Publishing

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• The origin of civilization is man's determination to do nothing for himself which he can get done for him.

  H. C. Bailey

  Wisdom, Determination, Men

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• 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

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• The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Thinking, Cake

  Hilaire Belloc (2009). “Essays of a Catholic”, p.13, TAN Books

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• The Reformation has been called in a biting epigram "a rising of the rich against the poor."

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Rising, Politics

  Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.85, TAN Books

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• The restoration of property would be a complicated, arduous and presumably a lengthy business; the transformation of a Capitalist Society into a Communist one needs nothing but the extension of existing conditions.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Would Be, Needs, Restoration

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• Under the old social philosophy which had governed the Middle Ages, temporal, and therefore all economic, activities were referred to an eternal standard. The production of wealth, it distribution and exchange were regulated with a view to securing the Christian life of Christian men. In two points especially was this felt: First in securing the independence of the family, which can only be done by the wide distribution of property, in others words the prevention of the growth of a proletariat; secondly, in the close connection between wealth and public function.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Christian, Philosophy, Men

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• Under the old philosophy which had governed the high Middle Ages things had been everywhere towards a condition of Society in which property was well distributed throughout the community, and thus the family rendered independent.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Philosophy, Independent, Community

  Hilaire Belloc (2016). “The Crisis Of Civilization”, p.84, TAN Books

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• We cannot make owners by merely giving men something to own. And, I repeat, whether there be sufficient desire for property left upon which we can work, only experience can decide.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Wisdom, Men, Giving

  Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.29, IHS Press

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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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• 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

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• Protest against Industrial Capitalism from one aspect or another is universal: so was the protest against the condition of European religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Politics, Century, Aspect

  Hilaire Belloc (1931). “Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556”

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• One man in one mood will attack Industrial Capitalism for its destruction of beauty; another for its incompetence; another for the vileness of the men who chiefly prosper under it; another for its mere confusion and noise; another for its false values; it was until recently most fiercely attacked for its impoverishment of the workers, its margin of unemployment and the rest - indeed so fiercely that it was compelled to seek palliatives for the evil. With a mass of men it was attacked from a vague but strong sense of injustice; it allowed a few rich to exploit mankind.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Strong, Men, Evil

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