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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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Henry George
Age: 58 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 2
Died: 1897
Died: October 29
Economist
Editor
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Ground
Mills
Private
Upper
Pressure
Ownership
Materials
Increasing
Progress
Classes
Land
Stone
Class
Stones
Nether
Working
Material
Mill

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Property in land is as indefensible as property in man.
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It is as to whether its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentleman for his own amusement is not.
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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.
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Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed the only animal that is never satisfied.
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How many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?
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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.
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Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.
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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.
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That alone is wise which is just that alone is enduring which is right.
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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.
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Man must be doing something, or fancy that he is doing something, for in him throbs the creative impulse the mere basker in the sunshine is not a natural, but an abnormal man.
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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.
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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
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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.
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So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
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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.
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The value of a thing is the amount of laboring or work that its possession will save the possessor.
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A good, very good, not to say admirable schoolmaster, but then he is only a schoolmaster.
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It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.
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Unless there be correct thought, there cannot be any action, and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.
Henry George