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No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men will submit themselves to torture and to death, mothers will immolate [burn] their children at the bidding of beliefs they thus accept.

Henry George

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Henry George
Age: 58 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 2
Died: 1897
Died: October 29
Economist
Editor
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Death
False
Superstitions
Mother
Thus
Submit
Become
Accept
Mothers
Fable
Children
Accepting
Burn
Bidding
Men
Theory
Torture
Degrading
Belief
Beliefs
Fables
Common
Absurd
Embedded
Faith
Acceptance
Superstition

More quotes by Henry George

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How many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?
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Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.
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That which is unjust can really profit no one that which is just can really harm no one.
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As man is so constituted that it is utterly impossible for him to attain happiness save by seeking the happiness of others, so does it seem to be of the nature of things that individuals and classes can obtain their own just rights only by struggling for the rights of others.
Henry George
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How vainly shall we endeavor to repress crime by our barbarous punishment of the poorer class of criminals so long as children are reared in the brutalizing influences of poverty, so long as the bite of want drives men to crime.
Henry George
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As it becomes more and more difficult to get land, so will the virtual enslavement of the laboring-classe s go on. As the value of land rises, more and more of the earnings of labor will be demanded for the use of land, until finally nothing is left to laborers but the wages of slavery -- a bare living.
Henry George
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Abolish all taxation save that upon land values.
Henry George
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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.
Henry George
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There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself.
Henry George
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Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.
Henry George
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It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly.
Henry George
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Property in land is as indefensible as property in man.
Henry George
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The fundamental principle of human action, the law, that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion
Henry George
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Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.
Henry George
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Blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.
Henry George
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Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.
Henry George
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Passing into higher forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant, and fitfully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man.
Henry George
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A good, very good, not to say admirable schoolmaster, but then he is only a schoolmaster.
Henry George
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The tolerance of wrong dulls our sense of its injustice. Men may become accustomed to theft, murder, even to slavery - that sum of all villainies - so they see no injustice in it, yet that which is unjust is unjust still.
Henry George
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What would happen to the individual if all the functions of the body were placed under the control of the consciousness is what would happen to a nation in which all individual activities were directed by government.
Henry George