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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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Henry George
Age: 58 †
Born: 1839
Born: September 2
Died: 1897
Died: October 29
Economist
Editor
Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Writer
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Impulse
Mere
Creative
Natural
Must
Throbs
Something
Abnormal
Men
Sunshine
Fancy

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How many men are there who fairly earn a million dollars?
Henry George
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Abolish all taxation save that upon land values.
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.
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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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Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.
Henry George
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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.
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
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The value of a thing is the amount of laboring or work that its possession will save the possessor.
Henry George
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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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Property in land is as indefensible as property in man.
Henry George
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one sex of voice in public matters, and that we could in no way so increase the attention , the intelligence and the devotion which may be brought to the solution of social problems as by enfranchising our women .
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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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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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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That alone is wise which is just that alone is enduring which is right.
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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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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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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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