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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
Progress
Classes
Land
Stone
Class
Stones
Nether
Working
Material
Mill
Ground
Mills
Private
Upper
Pressure
Ownership
Materials
Increasing

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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 ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general stock.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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As Mazzini said ... it is around the standard of duty rather than around the standard of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights of man. And herein may we see the deep philosophy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as themselves. In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to solve social problems and carry civilization onward.
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Unless there be correct thought, there cannot be any action, and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.
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A good, very good, not to say admirable schoolmaster, but then he is only a schoolmaster.
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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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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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Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each.
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My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both.
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We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit.
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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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