Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.
Henry GeorgeRead
Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each.
Interpretation
Social progress requires everyone to take responsibility for the welfare of the community.
Henry George emphasizes the interconnectedness of society, asserting that as societies progress, the welfare of all individuals becomes a shared responsibility. This notion advocates for collective action and concern for one another's well-being, suggesting that each person's efforts contribute to the greater good and a healthier, more supportive community.
In practice
In a public forum discussing community initiatives.
Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.
The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.
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. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve.
Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.
The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.
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.
We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.
The next step in human evolution is to transcend thought. This is now our urgent task. It doesn't mean not to think anymore, but simply not to be completely identified with thought, possessed by thought.
Christian salvation consists in works. To be saved is to be made holy. To be saved requires our being made part of a people separated from the world so that we can be united in spite of - or perhaps better, because of - the world's fragmentation and divisions.
The more freedom is extended to business, the more prisons have to be built for those who suffer from that business.
There isn't a King Lear for women, or a Henry V, or a Richard III. You reach a level where you can handle that stuff technically and mentally, and it's not there.
Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.
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