E.F. Schumacher quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by E.F. Schumacher

E.F. Schumacher Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from E.F. Schumacher on Wise Famous Quotes.

Modern man talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side

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

To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now.

Nobody really likes large-scale organizations; nobody likes to take orders from a superior who takes orders from a superior who takes orders ...

There is no economic problem and, in a sense, there never has been.

We still have to learn how to live peacefully, not only with our fellow men but also with nature ...

Not mass production but production by the masses.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex ... It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

The richer a society, the more impossible it becomes to do worthwhile things without immediate pay-off.

Many people love in themselves what they hate in others.

Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see.

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Without ... the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread - without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.

We think work with the brain is more worthy than work with the hands. Nobody who thinks with his hands could ever fall for this.

Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing.

True art is the intermediary between man's ordinary nature and his higher potentialities.

I cannot predict the wind but I can have my sail ready.

Man's needs are infinite, and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.

No one is really working for peace unless he is working primarily for the restoration of wisdom.

Study how a society uses its land, and you can come to pretty reliable conclusions as to what its future will be.

Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.

The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge. A gift of knowledge is infinitely preferable to a gift of material things.

There are poor societies which have too little; but where is the rich society that says: 'Halt! We have enough'? There is none.

The disease having been caused by allowing cleverness to displace wisdom, no amount of clever research is likely to produce a cure.

It is amazing how much theory we can do without when work actually begins.

Our faith gives us knowledge of something better.

If, however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters.

The substance of man cannot be measured by Gross National Product.

Modern economic thinking ... is peculiarly unable to consider the long term and to appreciate man's dependence on the natural world.

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.

There can be nothing sacred in something that has a price.

The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.

The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.

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

Much of the economic decay of southeast Asia (as of many other parts of the world) is undoubtedly due to a heedless and shameful neglect of trees.

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

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

An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.

Our task is to look at the world, and see it whole.

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

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

Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.

Real life consists of the tensions produced by the incompatibility of opposites, each of which is needed

Eagles come in all shapes and sizes, but you will recognize them chiefly by their attitudes.