R. H. Tawney Quotes

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnow.

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

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.

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

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

Private property is a necessary institution, at least in a fallen world; men work more and dispute less when goods are private than when they are in common.

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

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.

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

The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.

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.

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

One of the main truths of all education is that if the young are not always right, the old are always wrong.

As long as men are men, a poor society cannot be too poor to find a right order of life, nor a rich society too rich to have need to seek it.

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.

Freedom for the pike is death for the minnows.

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.