Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [1-7] of 7 Henry George quotesHenry George QuotesHenry George He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.~ Henry George 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.~ Henry George He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.~ Henry George If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have been content to live in a hovel, the tax gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry by taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am [taxed] while you are exempt. If a man built a ship, we make him pay for his temerity as though he had done injury to the state; if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it as though were a public nuisance.... We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery and him who drains a swamp. To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation from productive industry.... The state would say to the producer, “Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose. You shall have your full reward!”~ Henry George 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 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 Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are being ground.~ Henry George Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print