Quote

I think I should not go far wrong if I asserted that the amount of genuine leisure available in a society is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs.

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
Wrong
Saving
Society
Prosperity
Think
Generally
Employs
Thinking
Genuine
Asserted
Available
Inverse
Labor
Machinery
Amount
Leisure
Technology
Proportion

More quotes by E. F. Schumacher

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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.
E. F. Schumacher
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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.
E. F. Schumacher
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To describe an animal as a physico-chemical system of extreme complexityis no doubt perfectly correct, except that it misses out on the animalness of the animal.
E. F. Schumacher
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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.
E. F. Schumacher
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The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.
E. F. Schumacher
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I cannot predict the wind but I can have my sail ready.
E. F. Schumacher
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The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing.
E. F. Schumacher
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It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.
E. F. Schumacher
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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.
E. F. Schumacher
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Modern economic thinking...is peculiarly unable to consider the long term and to appreciate man's dependence on the natural world.
E. F. Schumacher
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The richer a society, the more impossible it becomes to do worthwhile things without immediate pay-off.
E. F. Schumacher
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Nobody really likes large-scale organizations nobody likes to take orders from a superior who takes orders from a superior who takes orders.
E. F. Schumacher
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The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product.
E. F. Schumacher
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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.
E. F. Schumacher
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There can be nothing sacred in something that has a price.
E. F. Schumacher
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By means of trees, wildlife could be conserved, pollution decreased, and the beauty of our landscapes enhanced. This is the way, or at least one of the ways, to spiritual, moral, and cultural regeneration.
E. F. Schumacher
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Our task is to look at the world, and see it whole.
E. F. Schumacher
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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.
E. F. Schumacher
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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
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Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.
E. F. Schumacher