R. H. Tawney Short Quotes

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An erring colleague is not an Amalkite to be smitten hip and thigh.

R. H. Tawney
It is probable that democracy owes more to nonconformity than to any other single movement.

R. H. Tawney
Bankruptcies of governments have, on the whole, done less harm to mankind than their ability to raise loans.

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
That seductive border region where politics grease the wheels of business and polite society smiles hopefully on both.

R. H. Tawney
Militarism…is fetish worship. It is the prostration of men's souls and the laceration of their bodies to appease an idol.

R. H. Tawney
England has not yet imitated the example set by America and by most of the British Dominions in making public secondary education free.

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
Too often, contemning the external order as unspiritual, [the Puritan] has made it, and ultimately himself, less spiritual by reason of his contempt.

R. H. Tawney
Transference from the primary school to higher education should depend solely upon whether it is likely to be for the benefit of the children concerned.

R. H. Tawney
Virtues are often conquered by vices, but their rout is most complete when it is inflicted by other virtues, more militant, more efficient, or more congenial.

R. H. Tawney
Its desire is that what is weak in the higher education of the country should be strengthened, and that what is already excellent should be made accessible to all.

R. H. Tawney
If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.

R. H. Tawney
Industrialized communities neglect the very objects for which it is worth while to acquire riches in their feverish preoccupation with the means by which riches can be acquired.

R. H. Tawney
The characteristic virtue of Englishmen is power of sustained practical activity and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles.

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
In England it is not ungentlemanly to steal halfpennies from children, and industrial interests, it may be assumed, will oppose any reform which interferes with the supply of cheap juvenile labour.

R. H. Tawney