Economy Quotes - Page 36

• Nothing can do men of good will more harm than apparent compromises with parties that subscribe to antimoral and antidemocratic and anti-God forces. We must have the courage to detach our support from men who are doing evil. We must bear them no hatred, but we must break with them.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Party, Men

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• The basic struggle today is not between individualism and collectivism, free enterprise and socialism, democracy and dictatorship. These are only the superficial manifestations of a deeper struggle which is moral and spiritual and involves above all else whether man shall exist for the state, or the state for man, and whether freedom is of the spirit or a concession of a materialized society.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Struggle

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• There is no word more "dangerous" than liberalism, because to oppose it is the new "unforgivable sin."

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Unforgivable Sin, Politics, Dangerous

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• If a man surrenders all power of self-determination in regard to the profits, management or ownership of the place where he works, he not only loses that special prerogative which marks him off from a cow in a pasture, but what is worse, he loses all capacity for determining any work. This is the beginning of a slavery which sometimes goes by the name of security.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Determination, Men

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• The Western world generally has lost the concept of man as a creature made to the image and likeness of God, and reduced him either to a component part of the universe, to an economic animal or to a "physiological bag filled with psychological libido." Once man became materialized and atomized in Western thinking, it was only natural for a totalitarianism to arise to gather up the fragments into a new totality and substitute the collective man for the individual man who was isolated from all social responsibilities.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Men

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• There are three ways in which a man becomes a slave. He may be born into slavery, or forced into it, or he can deliberately accept his servitude. All three forms flourish in the modern world. Men are born and forced into slavery in Russia and her satellites states. Men in the free world invite slavery when they ask the government to provide complete security, when they surrender their freedom to the "Welfare State."

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Men, Russia

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• The slave states of Western world are an outgrowth of monopolistic capitalism - an economic system which is opposed to the wide distribution of private property in many hands. Instead, monopolistic capitalism concentrates productive wealth among a few men, allowing the rest to become a vast proletariat.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Men, Hands

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• Some representatives of monopolistic capitalism, sensing this evil in their system, have tried to silence criticism by pointing to the diffused ownership in the great corporations. They advertise, "No one owns more than 4 percent of the stock of this great company." Or they print lists of stockholders, showing that these include farmers, schoolteachers, baseball players, taxi drivers, and even babies.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Baseball, Baby, Player

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• Possession properly has two faces, two aspects: we all have a right to private property, but this is accompanied by our responsibility for its righteous use. These two things (which should be inseparable) are frequently divided today. Everyone admits that the farmer who own a horse is obligated to feed and care for it, but in the case of stocks and bonds, we often forget that the same principle should prevail.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Horse, Responsibility

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• Monopolistic capitalism is to blame for this; it sunders the right to own property from responsibility that owning property involves. Those who own only a few stocks have no practical control of any industry. They vote by postcard proxy, but they have rarely even seen "their" company. The two elements which ought to be inextricably joined in any true conception of private property - ownership and responsibility - are separated. Those who own do not manage; those who manage; those who manage and work do not control or own.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Two

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• The workmen in a factory may have a shadowy, unknown absentee "employer" - the thousands of individual owners of stock - whom "management" represents and tries to please by extra dividends. The workman's livelihood is at the disposition of strangers who make a single demand of their representatives: higher profits.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Trying, Demand

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• Faced with such insecurity, labor unions seek a solution in demands for higher wages, shorter hours, pensions, and such things. But this approach takes monopolistic capitalism for granted, and accepts the unnatural division between property and responsibility as permanent. A much more radical solution is apt to come, and this may take either of two forms.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Two

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• Confiscation in any form is an unhealthy solution for a real disease. It amounts to telling men that because they are economically crippled, they must abandon all efforts to get well and allow the state to provide them with free wheelchairs.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Real, Get Well, Men

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• The denial of the right of ownership to a man is a denial of his basic freedom: freedom without property is always incomplete. To be "secured" - but with no accompanying responsibility - is to be the slave of whatever group provides the security.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Men

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• A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the "slave state" disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Wisdom, Responsibility, Flirting

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• Attempting mischievous and salutary irritation of his peers ... Keynes may only succeed in becoming an academic idol of our worst cranks and charlatans - not to mention the possibilities of the book as the economic bible of a fascist movement.

  Henry Calvert Simons

  Book, Irritation, Idols

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• Private property in the instruments of production is an institutional device both for dispersing power and for securing effective organization of production. The only simple property system is that of a slave society with a single slave owner - which, significantly, is the limiting case of despotism and of monopoly. Departure from such a system is a fair measure of human progress.

  Henry Calvert Simons

  Simple, Organization, Slave Owners

  Henry Calvert Simons (1948). “Economic Policy for a Free Society”

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• The libertarian good society lies... in the maximum dispersion of property compatible with effective production or, as process, in progressive reconciliation of conflicts between equality and efficiency. Such process involves increasing dispersion both of wealth among persons and families and of proximate productional control among enterprises or firms.

  Henry Calvert Simons

  Wisdom, Lying, Politics

  Henry Calvert Simons (1948). “Economic Policy for a Free Society”

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• To an American, that which deprives him of his freedom he regards as injustice, and that which allows him to enjoy that freedom he regards as justice. The concept of justice is as central to the totality of his being as freedom is, and this is not surprising, since the motivating idea behind the American Declaration of Independence was the fervent desire for justice.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Ideas, Justice, Independence

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• If one examines the American idea of freedom, the individual, free enterprise, their Constitution, their political and economic structures as well as their mode of exploiting their natural resources, all these are shrouded in the idea of justice.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Ideas, Justice, Political

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• A shocked sense of justice has to be removed and justice restored.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Wisdom, Justice, Politics

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• In the USA, where so many people compete for one and the same thing, where job opportunities, residential facilities, and food resources have to be spread over so many people, the question of justice becomes more imperative than ever before if communal and individual life is to be made possible and enjoyable.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Wisdom, Jobs, Opportunity

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• For the majority of Americans, collectivist or nationalized economy is morally wrong and therefore unjust. For them, free enterprise meets their keen sense of justice.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Wisdom, Justice, Majority

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• The U.S.A. economic policy and practice have been largely influenced by this thought that people shall own property in their own right and in order to be strong enough to control their own government.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Wisdom, Strong, Government

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• It appears it would be quite un-American not to be suspicious of the government or to distrust it. History has taught them a little too much about the tragic frailties of human governments, but it has also driven home to them that they must control firmly political and economic power, which, handed over to any government in their land, could be easily used to oppress them.

  Ndabaningi Sithole

  Wisdom, Home, Government

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