That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with…

“That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of nature, but to the injustice of man.”

Henry George

About This Quote

This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation.

Human suffering stems from societal injustice, not natural scarcity.

In simple terms: Inequality is man-made.

Key Takeaway

Address systemic injustice.

Themes

justice inequality human rights

Mood

somber hopeful

Type

political philosophical

When to use this quote

policy reform
community activism
education programs

Key Concepts

Economic disparity social ethics

Questions to Reflect On

What injustices are most evident today?
How can individuals contribute to fairness?

A Different Perspective

Changing systems is complex.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Civilization Injustice Justice Men Nature Poverty

More by Henry George

No theory is too false, no fable too absurd, no superstition too degrading for acceptance when it has become embedded in common belief. Men…

Henry George

Private ownership of land is the nether mill-stone. Material progress is the upper mill-stone. Between them, with an increasing pressure, the working classes are…

Henry George

As it becomes more and more difficult to get land, so will the virtual enslavement of the laboring-classe s go on. As the value…

Henry George

In all the new states of the Union, land monopolization has gone on at an alarming rate, but in none of them so fast…

Henry George

The ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to…

Henry George

The state, it cannot too often be repeated, does nothing, and can give nothing, which it does not take from somebody.

Henry George

It is not from top to bottom that societies die; it is from bottom to top.

Henry George

I do not think that any sorrow of youth or manhood equalled in intensity or duration the black and hopeless misery which followed the…

Henry George

What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

Henry George

It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of…

Henry George

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own…

Henry George

Social progress makes the well-being of all more and more the business of each.

Henry George

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes…

Henry George

The value of a thing is the amount of laboring or work that its possession will save the possessor.

Henry George

The tolerance of wrong dulls our sense of its injustice. Men may become accustomed to theft, murder, even to slavery - that sum of…

Henry George

Explore all 84 Henry George quotes

More Civilization quotes

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and…

Octavio Paz

Sentiment is the mightiest force in civilization; not sentimentality, but sentiment. Women will bring this into politics. Home, sweet home, is as powerful on…

Judith Ellen Foster

Violence is not necessary to destroy a civilization. Each civilization dies from indifference toward the unique values which created it.

Nicolas Gomez Davila

“The voice in the head that never stops speaking becomes a civilization that is obsessed with form and therefore knows nothing of the most…

Eckhart Tolle

We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents cover 109,000…

Julian Assange

Wine is one of the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been…

Ernest Hemingway

Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a…

Carl Jung

The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing…

Carl von Clausewitz

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The mission is, not to replace old world mindlessness with new world mindlessness, but to put an end to all forms of brainless authoritarianism.”

Abhijit Naskar

We are somehow the children of the planet, we are somehow its finest hour; we bind time, we bind the past, we anticipate the…

Terence McKenna

Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many…

James Joyce

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may…

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accountant's profit, we have begun to change our civilization.

John Maynard Keynes

Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it…

David Josiah Brewer

Browse all 4,084 Civilization quotes

That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with…

About This Quote

Related quotes

More by Henry George

More Civilization quotes