96 Quotes by E. F. Schumacher

Our task - and the task of all education - is to understand the present world, the world in which we live and make our choices.

Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity.

An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods. . . .

There is incredible generosity in the potentialities of Nature. We only have to discover how to utilize them.

That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of 'bread and circuses' can compensate for the damage done-these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence-because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.

Anyone who thinks consumption can expand forever on a finite planet is either insane or an economist.

Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization, and discipline. Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped, potential.

Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology toward the organic, the gentle, the elegant and beautiful.

The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources, and stultifying for the human person.