Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield Quotes

5 Sourced Quotes

The capitalist is very fond of declaring that labour is a commodity, and the wage contract a bargain of purchase and sale like any other. But he instinctively expects his wage-earners to render him, not only obedience, but also personal deference. If the wage contract is a bargain of purchase and sale like any other, why is the workman expected to toff his hat to his employer, and to say 'sir' to him without reciprocity?

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield
Once we face the necessity of putting our principles first into Bills, to be fought through committee clause by clause; and then into the appropriate machinery for carrying them into execution from one end of the kingdom to the other…the inevitability of gradualness cannot fail to be appreciated.

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield
Let me insist on what our opponents habitually ignore, and indeed, what they seem intellectually incapable of understanding, namely the inevitable gradualness of our scheme of change.

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield
Marriage is the waste-paper basket of the emotions.

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield
Just as every human being has an ancestry, unknown to him though it may be; so every idea, every incident, every movement has in the past its own long chain of causes, without which it could not have been. Formerly we were glad to let the dead bury their dead: nowadays we turn lovingly to the records, whether of persons or things; and we busy ourselves willingly among origins, even without conscious utilitarian end. We are no longer proud of having ancestors, since every one has them; but we are more than ever interested in our ancestors, now that we find in them the fragments which compose our very selves.

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield