Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry George
Age: 58 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 2
Died: 1897
Died: October 29
Economist
Editor
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Least
Desires
Law
Physics
Desire
Fundamental
Action
Fundamentals
Political
Principle
Human
Seek
Gratify
Humans
Principles
Gravitation
Men
Economy
Exertion

More quotes by Henry George

Image
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
Image
Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed the only animal that is never satisfied.
Henry George
Image
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
Image
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.
Henry George
Image
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
Image
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
Image
That alone is wise which is just that alone is enduring which is right.
Henry George
Image
A good, very good, not to say admirable schoolmaster, but then he is only a schoolmaster.
Henry George
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The value of a thing is the amount of laboring or work that its possession will save the possessor.
Henry George
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
That which is unjust can really profit no one that which is just can really harm no one.
Henry George
Image
Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.
Henry George
Image
Laissez faire (in its full true meaning) opens the way to the realization of the noble dreams of socialism.
Henry George
Image
Abolish all taxation save that upon land values.
Henry George
Image
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
Image
Passing into higher forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant, and fitfully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man.
Henry George