— Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, Allen and Unwin, 1946, 267.
Ill fares the land,
to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
— Oliver Goldsmith (1728 – 1774), The Deserted
Village.
I trust a good deal
to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs,
to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than
anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be
in the woods.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 – 1882), journal, 1855.
The effects are precisely
similar to those which follow from the use of improved machinery at home. Whilst
the use of the machine is confined to one, or a very few manufacturers, they may
obtain unusual profits, because they are enabled to sell their commodities at a
price much above the cost of production — but as soon as the machine becomes general
to the whole trade, the price of the commodities will sink to the actual cost of
production, leaving only the usual and ordinary profits.
— David Ricardo (1772 – 1823), An Essay on
Profits, 1815.
Therefore when I consider
and weigh in my mind all these commonwealths, which nowadays do flourish, so god
help me, I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their
own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth. They invent and devise
all means and crafts … to hire and abuse the work and labor of the poor for as little
money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed … be made laws
— Sir Thomas More (1478 – 1535) Utopia.
The lawn unquestionably
has an element of sensuous beauty...no doubt it appeals pretty directly to the eye
of nearly all races and all classes; but it is, perhaps, more unquestionably beautiful
to the eye of the dolicho-blond than to most other varieties of men. This higher
appreciation of a stretch of greensward in this ethnic element than in the other
elements of the population, goes along with certain other features of the dolicho-blond
temperament that indicate that this racial element had once been for a long time
a pastoral people inhabiting a region with a humid climate. The close-cropped lawn
is beautiful in the eyes of a people whose inherited bent it is to readily find
pleasure in contemplating a well-preserved pasture or grazing land.
— Thorstein Veblen (1857 – 1929), The Theory
of the Leisure Class.
Such a park is of
course best kept by grazing, and the cattle on the grass are themselves no mean
addition to the beauty of the thing, as need scarcely be insisted on with anyone
who has once seen a well-kept pasture. But it is worth noting, as an expression
of the pecuniary element in popular taste, that such a method of keeping public
grounds is seldom resorted to.
— Thorstein Veblen (1857 – 1929), The Theory
of the Leisure Class.
We learn how Thales,
being taunted with his poverty, bought up all the olive-presses on the instalment
plan, and was then able to charge monopoly rates for their use. This he did to show
that philosophers can make money, and, if they remain poor, it is because they have
something more important than wealth to think about.
— Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy,
Allen and Unwin, 1946, 197.
By opening a new and
inexhaustible market to all the commodities of Europe, it gave occasion to new divisions
of labour and improvements of art, which, in the narrow circle of the ancient commerce,
could never have taken place for the want of a market to take off a greater part
of the produce. The productive powers of labour were improved, and its produce increased
in all the different countries of Europe, and together with it the real revenue
and wealth of the inhabitants.
— Adam Smith, (1723 – 1790) The Wealth of
Nations, quoted by Boorstin, The Discoverers,
655.
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