It is impossible not to notice how little the proponents of the ideal of competition have to say about honesty, which is the fundamental economic virtue, and how very little they have to say about community, compassion, and mutual help.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (1988), “Economy and Pleasure,” What Are People For? (1990)
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Quotations about:
laissez-faire
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Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.
Wendell Berry (b. 1934) American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
Essay (1988), “Economy and Pleasure,” What Are People For? (1990)
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Many of us have beliefs that aren’t really genuine; we just think they’re genuine. We think individualism is genuine. We think laissez faire is genuine. We don’t really want it. Big business bemoans government interference. It would be horrified if the government, for example, did away with patent laws.
Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998) American historian, writer, activist
Interview (1970-02) by John A. Garraty, “American Nationalism,” Interpreting American History: Conversations with Historians, Part 1, ch. 4 (1970)
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In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel, of Supply-and-demand, Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil take the hindmost, begins to be one of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached on Earth; or altogether the shabbiest.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
Past and Present, Book 3, ch. 9 “Working Aristocracy” (1843)
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We have passed beyond the time of what they call the laisser-faire school which believes that the Government ought to do nothing but run a police force.
William Howard Taft (1857-1930) US President (1909-13) and Chief Justice (1921-1930)
Speech, Milwaukee (17 Sep 1909)
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