R. H. Tawney - Life Quotes

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What in Calvin had been a qualified concession to practical exigencies appeared in some of his later followers as a frank idealization of the life of the trader, as the service of God and the training-ground of the soul. Discarding the suspicion of economic motives, which had been as characteristic of the reformers as of medieval theologians, Puritanism in its later phases added a halo of ethical sanctification to the appeal of economic expediency, and offered a moral creed, in which the duties of religion and the calls of business ended their long estrangement in an unanticipated reconciliation.

R. H. Tawney
Defined by its purpose, its [education's] main aim is not to impart the specialized technique of any particular trade or profession, but to develop the faculties which, because they are the attribute of man, are not peculiar to any particular class or profession of men, and to build up the interests which, while they may become the basis of specialization at a later stage, have a value extending beyond their utility for any particular vocation, because they are the condition of a rational and responsible life in society.

R. H. Tawney
To countless generations of religious thinkers, the fundamental maxim of Christian social ethics had seemed to be expressed in the words of St. Paul to Timothy: "Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. For the love of money is the root of all evil." Now, while, as always, the world battered at the gate, a new standard was raised within the citadel by its own defenders. The garrison had discovered that the invading host of economic appetites was, not an enemy, but an ally. Not sufficiency to the needs of daily life, but limitless increase and expansion, became the goal of the Christian's efforts.

R. H. Tawney
Those who dread a dead-level of income or wealth…do not dread, it seems, a dead-level of law and order, and of security for life and property.

R. H. Tawney
A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.

R. H. Tawney
When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.

R. H. Tawney