Quote

Economic policies absorb almost the entire attention of government, and at the same time become ever more impotent. The simplest things, which only fifty years ago one could do without difficulty, cannot get done any more. The richer a society, the more impossible it become to do worthwhile things without immediate payoff.

E. F. Schumacher

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E. F. Schumacher
Age: 66 †
Born: 1911
Born: August 16
Died: 1977
Died: September 4
Economist
Philosopher
Statistician
Bonn
Germany
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher
Things
Society
Difficulty
Payoff
Time
Cannot
Entire
Absorb
Become
Policy
Richer
Government
Economy
Simplest
Ever
Economic
Immediate
Without
Impossible
Policies
Done
Almost
Worthwhile
Years
Attention
Fifty
Impotent

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The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product.
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Our task is to look at the world, and see it whole.
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Many have no desire to be in it, because their work does not interest them, providing them with neither challenge nor satisfaction, and has no other merit in their eyes than that it leads to a pay-packet at the end of the week.
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Is there enough to go around? What is enough? Who can tell us? Certainly not the economist who pursues economic growth as the highest of all values, and therefore has no concept of enough.
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The richer a society, the more impossible it becomes to do worthwhile things without immediate pay-off.
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I cannot predict the wind but I can have my sail ready.
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Our faith gives us knowledge of something better.
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The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources, and stultifying for the human person.
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The key words of violent economics are urbanization, industrialization, centralization, efficiency, quantity, speed. . . . The problem of evolving a nonviolent way of economic life [in the West] and that of developing the underdeveloped countries may well turn out to be largely identical.
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Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance.
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Without ... the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread - without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.
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The most striking thing about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little.
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The real problems of our planet are not economic or technical, they are philosophical. The philosophy of unbridled materialism is being challenged by events.
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An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods. . . .
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There are poor societies which have too little but where is the rich society that says: 'Halt! We have enough'? There is none.
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No one is really working for peace unless he is working primarily for the restoration of wisdom.
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The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing.
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The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.
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Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.
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There can be nothing sacred in something that has a price.
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