The existing way of life agrees neither with the demands of conscience, nor the demands of reason.
Many businessmen think that the most appropriate order of things in this world is simply the one in which a large, disorderly crowd snatches from each other everything they can get their hands on, tramples children and old people into the dirt and fabricates all kinds of useless objects with the help of workers, who may be enticed and assembled, and then consequently dispersed, left free to starve.
— John Ruskin
If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn; and if (instead of each picking where and what it liked) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst, pigeon of the flock; sitting round and looking on, all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of this hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it and tearing it to pieces; if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men.
— Paley
Can I see without sadness how people use their intellect to quarrel with one another, to set up traps for one another, to deceive and betray one another? How can I look without tears at how the foundations of good and evil have been abandoned, or rather, are unknown?
— Theognis
There are inexhaustible treasures in the earth and in sunlight, in the plant and animal kingdoms, in ore deposits and in the forces of nature which we are only just beginning to use, with which people, guided by reason, could satisfy all of their material needs. Nature gives no one a reason to be poor—even one who is hunchbacked and decrepit. For a human being is by his nature a social animal, and if it were not for the brutalizing influence of chronic poverty, then familial love and social compassion would provide all the necessities for those unable to support themselves.
— Henry George
To improve life in general it is necessary to invest more and more reason and love into the governance of public affairs, not only by specific individuals, but by the whole of society. It is not wise for us to leave our public affairs to statesmen. The people must think for themselves, for only they can act.
— Henry George
However stable our civilization may seem to us, destructive forces are already developing within it. Not in the deserts and the forests, but in the city slums and on the highways, barbarians are being brought up who will do the same to our civilization that the Huns and the Vandals did to the ancient one.
— Henry George
Reforms must be done by the people and for the people; as long as they remain the property and monopoly of one class, as they are at present, they will only lead to one evil being replaced with another and will not serve the salvation of the people.
— Mazzini
Human beings are rational creatures. So why is society guided by violence instead of reason?
