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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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Henry George
Age: 58 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 2
Died: 1897
Died: October 29
Economist
Editor
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Religious
Preserve
Business
Virtuous
Preserves
Government
Libertarian
Make
Folly
Men
Consequences
Consequence
Fool

More quotes by 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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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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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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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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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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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.
Henry George
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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
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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.
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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That which is unjust can really profit no one that which is just can really harm no one.
Henry George
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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.
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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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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Abolish all taxation save that upon land values.
Henry George
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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.
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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Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed the only animal that is never satisfied.
Henry George
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There is danger in reckless change, but greater danger in blind conservatism.
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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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