E. F. Schumacher Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of E. F. Schumacher's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Statistician E. F. Schumacher's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 98 quotes on this page collected since August 16, 1911! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • Not mass production but production by the masses.

  • Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful.

    Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered pt. 2, ch. 5 (1973)
  • Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity.

  • The technology of mass production is inherently violent, ecologically damaging, self-defeating in terms of non-renewable resources, and stultifying for the human person.

    E.F.SCHUMACHER (1973). “SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL”
  • From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the sub-human, surrender to the forces of evil.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • There is no economic problem and, in a sense, there never has been.

  • We must do what we conceive to be the right thing, and not bother our heads or burden our souls with whether we are going to be successful. Because if we don't do the right thing, we'll be doing the wrong thing, and we will just be part of the disease, and not a part of the cure.

  • Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • Man's needs are infinite, and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • The purpose of work is to give people a chance to utilize and develop their faculties; to enable them to overcome their ego-centeredness by joining others in a common task; and to bring for the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.

  • The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing.

  • I started by saying that one of the most fateful errors of our age is the belief that the problem of production has been solved. This illusion, I suggested, is mainly due to our inability to recognize that the modern industrial system, with all its intellectual sophistication, consumes the very basis on which is has been erected. To use the language of the economist, it lives on irreplaceable capital which it cheerfully treats as income.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • Perhaps we cannot raise the winds. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.

    "Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered". Book by E. F. Schumacher, 1973.
  • Anything that we can destroy, but are unable to make is, in a sense, sacred, and all our 'explanations' of it do not explain anything.

    "A Guide for the Perplexed". Book by E. F. Schumacher, 1977.
  • Our faith gives us knowledge of something better.

  • Few can contemplate without a sense of exhilaration the splendid achievements of practical energy and technical skill, which, from the latter part of the seventeenth century, were transforming the face of material civilization, and of which England was the daring, if not too scrupulous, pioneer.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization, and discipline. Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped, potential.

    E.F.SCHUMACHER (1973). “SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL”
  • The real problems of our planet are not economic or technical, they are philosophical. The philosophy of unbridled materialism is being challenged by events.

  • If I limit myself to knowledge that I consider true beyond doubt, I minimize the risk of error but I maximize, at the same time, the risk of missing out on what may be the subtlest, most important and most rewarding things in life.

  • Scientific and technological "solutions" which poison the environment or degrade the social structure and man himself are of no benefit, no matter how brilliantly conceived or how great their superficial attraction.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into this world, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
  • It has been universally recognized, in all authentic teachings of mankind, that every being born into this world has to work, not merely to keep himself alive, but to strive towards perfection.

  • The generosity of the Earth allows us to feed all mankind; we know enough about ecology to keep the Earth a healthy place; there is enough room on the Earth, and there are enough materials, so that everybody can have adequate shelter; we are quite competent enough to produce sufficient supplies of necessities so that no one need live in misery.

  • Even bigger machines, entailing even bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom. Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the nonviolent, the elegant and beautiful.

  • Modern economic thinking...is peculiarly unable to consider the long term and to appreciate man's dependence on the natural world.

  • Anyone who thinks consumption can expand forever on a finite planet is either insane or an economist.

  • Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market

  • The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid , uninteresting, petty and chaotic.

    "SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL".
  • If, however, economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters

    E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 98 quotes from the Statistician E. F. Schumacher, starting from August 16, 1911! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!

    E. F. Schumacher

    • Born: August 16, 1911
    • Died: September 4, 1977
    • Occupation: Statistician