210 Quotes by Hilaire Belloc

Economic freedom is in our eyes a good. It is among the highest of temporal goods because it is necessary to the highest life of society through the dignity of man and through the multiplicity of his action, in which multiplicity is life. Through well-divided property alone can the units of society react upon the State. Through it alone can a public opinion flourish. Only where the bulk of the cells are healthy can the whole organism thrive.

The whole art of the political speech is to put 'nothing' into it. It is much more difficult than it sounds.

Alas! That such affected tricks/ Should flourish in a child of six!

The power of the State must be invoked for restoring economic freedom just as it has been invoked for destroying economic freedom.

Oh! let us never, never doubt what nobody is sure about!

It is therefore our business to restore economic freedom through the restoration of the only institution under which it flourishes, which institution is Property. The problem before us is, how to restore Property so that it shall be, as it was not so long ago, a general institution.

The Microbe is so very small/ You cannot make him out at all,/ But many sanguine people hope/ To see him through a microscope.

Political freedom without economic freedom is almost worthless, and it is because the modern proletariat has the one kind of freedom without the other that its rebellion is now threatening the very structure of the modern world.

And mothers of large families (who claim common sense) will find a Tiger well repay the trouble and expense.