This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
I am concerned here exclusively with the problem of helping people in the non-modern sector… because all successes in the modern sector are likely to be illusory unless there is also a healthy growth—or at least a healthy condition of stability—among the very great numbers of people today whose life is characterized not only by dire poverty but also by hopelessness.
Greed | Temptation | Temptation |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
In the simple question of how we treat the land, next to people our most precious resource, our entire way of live is involved, and before our policies with regard to the land will really be changed, there will have to be a great deal of philosophical, not to say religious, change. It is not a question of what we can afford but of what we choose to spend our money on. If we could return to a generous recognition of meta-economic values, our landscapes would become healthy and beautiful again and our people would regain the dignity of manÂ…
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Words that do not match deeds are unimportant.
Change | Ignominy | Inevitable | Order | People | Protest | System |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase in needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war.
Attention | Economics | People | Problems | System | Thinking | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The only way to solve the problems now besetting mankind is to eliminate completely the exploitation of dependent countries by developed capitalist countries, with all the consequences that this implies.
Government | System | Government |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Nature, it has been said, abhors a vacuum, and when the available "spiritual space" is not filled by some higher motivation, then it will necessarily be filled by something lower – by the small, mean, calculating attitude to life which is rationalized in the economic calculus.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
If our intellectual leaders treat work as nothing but a necessary evil soon to be abolished as far as the majority is concerned, the urge to minimize it right away is hardly a surprising reaction, and the problem of motivation becomes insoluble.
Envy | Greed | Inevitable | Man | Nothing | Power | Problems |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The arising of this error, so egregious and so firmly rooted, is closely connected with the philosophical, not to say religious, changes during the last three or four centuries in man's attitude to natureÂ…Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
There is only one thing to do — take it to the country!
Incompetence | Life | Life | People | Success | System | War |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.
Public | System | Propaganda |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.
Indispensable | Insanity | Man | System |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.