50 quotes
There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any better state of society than that which now exists.
Progress and Poverty (1879)
It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer.
Progress and Poverty (1879)
The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air — it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.
Progress and Poverty (1879)
In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to solve social problems and carry civilization onward.
Social Problems (1883)
The rights of men to the use of land are not joint rights: they are equal rights.
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.
Social Problems (1883)
The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a thing of the mere intellect.
Social Problems (1883)
More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us.
Social Problems (1883)
In securing the equal rights of these we shall secure the equal rights of all.
Social Problems (1883)
In the plan of forcing by endurance an increase of wages, there are in such methods inherent disadvantages which workingmen should not blink.
Progress and Poverty (1879)
Why should charity be offered the unemployed?
How to Help the Unemployed (1894)
Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge.
Protection or Free Trade? (1886)
The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will.
I am no sentimental admirer of the savage state.
Progress and Poverty (1879)
If thinking men are few, they are for that reason all the more powerful. Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power.
Social Problems (1883)
The great work of the present for every man, and every organization of men, who would improve social conditions, is the work of education — the propagation of ideas. It is only as it aids this that anything else can avail.
Social Problems (1883)
Passing into higher forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant, and fitfully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man.
The progress of civilization necessitates the giving of greater and greater attention and intelligence to public affairs.
Social Problems (1883)
That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one.
Now, however, we are coming into collision with facts which there can be no mistaking.
Progress and Poverty (1879)