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.
It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old.
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
The day we stop exploring is the day we commit ourselves to live in a stagnant world, devoid of curiosity, empty of dreams.
What is meaningful cannot in fact be isolatedβ¦. We achieve understanding within a circular movement from particular facts to the whole that includes them and back again from the whole thus reached to the particular significant facts.
The apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it.
When people ask me where my roots are, I look down at my feet, and I see the roots of my soul grasping the earth. They are here... in the Southwest... I still live in New Mexico.
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