Kirby Page - Power Quotes

21 Sourced Quotes

View all Kirby Page Quotes
A powerful consumers cooperative movement helps to maintain an equitable balance between prices and profits, and thereby decreases the power of owners and investors.

Kirby Page
The consolidation of financial and industrial power in the hands of a small section of the people leads inevitably to more and more intense congestion of money.

Kirby Page
The actual participants in industry under individualism are prompted to action by the following combination of incentives: desire for an income, desire for a higher income, desire for security, satisfaction received from shouldering responsibility or from wielding power, the joy of participation in creative activity, and the desire for applause and prestige.... And all these motivations may be conserved and strengthened under socialism.

Kirby Page
National unions embracing a considerable portion of the workers in a given industry are able to exert terrific power in the determination of the relative levels of wages, dividends and interest. To the degree that organized labor is strong, the power of owners is decreased.

Kirby Page
In the Baruch proposal our government suggested the creation of the International Authority by the United Nations to which would be given a complete monopoly of all atomic installations, materials and stockpiles. This authority should be given power of inspection and power to call for the punishment of violators.

Kirby Page
Every basic doctrine of Christianity is nullified to the degree that we accept the ideas and practices of atomic war: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the inestimable value of human life, the kinship of all peoples, the duty and privilege of of sympathy and compassion and affection, the responsibility of the strong to bear the burdens of the weak, the overcoming of evil with goodness, the redemptive power of self-giving love, the supremacy of spiritual forces over material might.

Kirby Page
Imperialist powers are blinded by tradition, prestige and self-interest, and vainly imagine that it is for the good of humanity that they should perpetuate their rule and continue to bear "the white man's burden." Their assumption of superiority and the contemptuous way in which they often treat the "natives" is humiliating and degrading.

Kirby Page
Feebleness of confidence in the power of international goodwill operating through appropriate agencies of international justice and friendship is at present paralyzing efforts to take the steps which must be taken if war is to be averted.

Kirby Page
The political horizon would be greatly clarified if the voters were offered the choice of three parties representing three strategies: A conservative party committed to the preservation of individualism, perhaps in a highly modified form; a communist party bent upon revolutionary changes through violent seizure of power, confiscation, and a proletarian dictatorship; and a radical party seeking to socialize the basic industries and to move toward an equalization of economic privilege through purchase, taxation, and drastic regulation, without resorting to confiscation or armed seizure of power.

Kirby Page
The victims of greed and exploitation will never get justice solely by relying upon the vision and generosity of those who hold power and seek their own gain. Power is blinding and corrupting and causes the slave-owner to imagine that it is his duty to perpetuate slavery. The victims of imperialism, in a world where national egotism and greed are rampant, must resort to coercive action if they are to secure freedom and justice.

Kirby Page
The imminence of the threat hovering over civilization requires Christians to disentangle themselves from the war system as completely and as rapidly as they can.... Every Christian has the power to support or to oppose preparedness to wage atomic war.... He can support or oppose the delegating of wider jurisdiction and greater authority to the United Nations Organization through limitations upon national sovereignty. He can support or oppose the policy of settling every conceivable controversy with another nation by pacific means only. He can support or oppose the effort to create the international mind and heart in place of extreme nationalism and narrow patriotism.... He can choose between the way of war and the way of Jesus.

Kirby Page
All of our boasted wealth, wonderful inventions and incalculable mechanical power will prove to be an unstable foundation if we continue to dwell together in strife—individual against individual, class against class, nation against nation.

Kirby Page
World government must progressively be established, common problems must be solved by common action, economic and racial justice and fellowship must be achieved... empires must be transformed into commonwealths, the race of armaments must be stopped and the system of balance-of-armed-power must be brought to an end, the churches must take Jesus seriously by trusting goodwill and pacific means and by disentangling themselves from the war system, a mighty movement of peoples must be created so that governments will maintain friendly and cooperative relations and will refrain from hostile and provocative actions.... Now is the time to prevent a third world war.

Kirby Page
Jesus assumes the wisdom, power, love, and accessibility of God. Without attempting to prove these attributes, he simply acts as if their truth were beyond dispute.

Kirby Page
In three ways unemployment would be reduced. First... by greater equalization of purchasing power and consequent stimulus in the form of effective demand. Second, by utilizing the national credit and socialized industries for the creation of new industries and the extension of existing ones.... Social ownership and operation of the basic industries, and especially socialized banking and credit, would greatly facilitate the task of shifting the masses of unemployed into productive channels. Third, if necessary, by shortening working hours and dividing the available work among all the people.

Kirby Page
The economic and political power—and therefore police and military force—at the disposal of the owning class is almost illimitable, and is wielded with a ruthless determination to maintain privilege, prestige, and power.

Kirby Page
The police actually do serve as a constructive and redemptive force in society, in spite of many miscarriages, in spite of many miscarriages of justice and occasional misuse of power. Modern war... in actual operation is not constructive but so enormously destructive as to menace the existence of our civilization. It neither protects the innocent nor redeems the guilty.

Kirby Page
It seems... wholly out of the question to assemble a genuinely international police at this time. Before that can be accomplished it will be necessary to reduce to a minimum or disband altogether the various national armies and navies, and to create an effective world government with power over matters that are international in character which transcends the power of single nations. In the meantime, any armed force that went by the name "international police" would not be impartial but would be dominated by one or two large military powers.

Kirby Page
To the extent that a political party bent upon socialization is supported by a substantial majority of voters, it will be able to utilize the powers of government in diminishing the power of ownership.

Kirby Page
Imperialist war arises not merely because of bitter economic competition among industrialists and financiers of various nations, but because of the dominance of government by powerful vested interests who use the armed forces of the nation to increase their private gains in other lands. To the degree that the power of these groups is broken by socialization and equalization of economic privilege, the likelihood of war is thereby reduced.

Kirby Page
Professor Toynbee reminds us that sixteen civilizations have already been destroyed and that nine others are mortally sick and destined to go the way of the preceding sixteen. This just leaves one, our own civilization. And it is highly vulnerable because it is a machine civilization, it is a city civilization, and this generation has power to smash the machine and demolish the city.

Kirby Page