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Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.

— E. F. Schumacher Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973)

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Nature

More quotes by E. F. Schumacher

The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure.

Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973)

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.

Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973)

It is doubly chimerical to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict.

Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered (1973)

The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.

Small is Beautiful (1973)

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Utu, shepherd of the land, father of the black-headed, when you go to sleep, the people go to sleep with you; youth Utu, when you rise, the people rise with you.

Lugalbanda

The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1776)

Matter gave birth to a passion that has no equal, which proceeded from something contrary to nature. Then there arises a disturbance in its whole body.

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Attribution

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