F. Schumacher
F. Schumacher
errors things-in-life missing
If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error but I maximize, at the same time, the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life.
compassion attachment people
To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence.
technology thinking saving
I think I should not go far wrong if I asserted that the amount of genuine leisure available in a society is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs.
sacred small-is-beautiful
There can be nothing sacred in something that has a price.
worthwhile-things years government
Economic policies absorb almost the entire attention of government, and at the same time become ever more impotent. The simplest things, which only fifty years ago one could do without difficulty, cannot get done any more. The richer a society, the more impossible it become to do worthwhile things without immediate payoff.
errors intellectual environmental
I started by saying that one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problem of production has been solved. This illusion, I suggested, is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which is has been erected. To use the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income.
attitude greatness eagles
Eagles come in all shapes and sizes, but you will recognize them chiefly by their attitudes.
funny-work might income
It might be said that it is the ideal of the employer to have production without employees and the ideal of the employee is to have income without work.
sacred explanation
Anything that we can destroy but are unable to make is, in a sense sacred, and all our 'explanations' of it do not really explain anything.
generosity healthy needs
The generosity of the Earth allows us to feed all mankind; we know enough about ecology to keep the Earth a healthy place; there is enough room on the Earth, and there are enough materials, so that everybody can have adequate shelter; we are quite competent enough to produce sufficient supplies of necessities so that no one need live in misery.
imagination littles ordinary
The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.
problem economic has-beens
There is no economic problem and, in a sense, there never has been.
fundamentals tasks achieve
The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.
moon society mars
After all, for mankind as a whole there are no exports. We did not start developing by obtaining foreign exchange from Mars or the moon. Mankind is a closed society.