E. F. Schumacher Quotes

68 Sourced Quotes

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

E. F. Schumacher
An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.

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

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

E. F. Schumacher
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

E. F. Schumacher
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.

E. F. Schumacher
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.

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

E. F. Schumacher
Anything that we can destroy, but are unable to make is, in a sense, sacred, and all our 'explanations' of it do not explain anything.

E. F. Schumacher
Education can help us only if it produces whole men. The truly educated man is not a man who knows a bit of everything, not even the man who knows all the details of all subjects (if such a thing were possible): the whole man in fact, may have little detailed knowledge of facts and theories, he may treasure the Encyclopædia Britannica because she knows and he needn't, but he will be truly in touch with the centre. He will not be in doubt about his basic convictions, about his view on the meaning and purpose of his life. He may not be able to explain these matters in words, but the conduct of his life will show a certain sureness of touch which stems from this inner clarity.

E. F. Schumacher
The heart of the matter, as I see it, is the stark fact that world poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two thousand million villagers.

E. F. Schumacher
The greatest deprivation anyone can suffer is to have no chance of looking after himself and making a livelihood.

E. F. Schumacher
There are three things healthy people most need to do - to be creatively productive, to render service, and to act in accordance with their moral impulses. In all three respects modern society frustrates most people most of the time.

E. F. Schumacher
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.

E. F. Schumacher
A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of the Earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called violent.

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

E. F. Schumacher
From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the sub-human, surrender to the forces of evil.

E. F. Schumacher
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.

E. F. Schumacher
Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be 'uneconomic' you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper.

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

E. F. Schumacher
The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within large organisation.

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

E. F. Schumacher
It is doubly chimerical to build peace on economic foundations which, in turn, rest on the systematic cultivation of greed and envy, the very forces which drive men into conflict.

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

E. F. Schumacher
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.

E. F. Schumacher