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To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be.

— Henry George Social Problems (1883)

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More quotes by Henry George

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)

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry George (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.