E. F. Schumacher
E. F. Schumacher
Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacherwas an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain, serving as Chief Economic Advisor to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. His ideas became popularised in much of the English-speaking world during the 1970s. He is best known for his critique of Western economies and his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth16 August 1911
E. F. Schumacher quotes about
organization order likes
Nobody really likes large-scale organizations; nobody likes to take orders from a superior who takes orders from a superior who takes orders....
problem economic has-beens
There is no economic problem and, in a sense, there never has been.
imagination littles ordinary
The most striking about modern industry is that it requires so much and accomplishes so little. Modern industry seems to be inefficient to a degree that surpasses one's ordinary powers of imagination. Its inefficiency therefore remains unnoticed.
tree decay world
Much of the economic decay of southeast Asia (as of many other parts of the world) is undoubtedly due to a heedless and shameful neglect of trees.
heart two world
The heart of the matter, as I see it, is the stark fact that world poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two thousand million villagers.
men thinking long
Modern economic thinking...is peculiarly unable to consider the long term and to appreciate man's dependence on the natural world.
generosity healthy needs
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.
men demand world
The modern world tends to be skeptical about everything that makes demands on man's higher faculties. But it is not at all skeptical about skepticism, which demands hardly anything.
lying ideas giving
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. It is difficult to bear the resultant feeling of emptiness, and the vacuum of our minds may only too easily be filled by some big, fantastic notion - political or otherwise - which suddenly seem to illumine everything and to give meaning and purpose to our existence. It needs no emphasis that herein lies one of the great dangers of our time.
beautiful technology progress
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.
eye
Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see.
simple needs simple-living
Many of them had a better time than they ever had in their lives because they were discovering the new freedom - the less you need, the freer you become.
independence needs existential
Every increase of needs tends to increase one's independence on outside forces over which one cannont have control and therefore increases existential fear
life art inspire
The art of living is always to make a good thing out of a bad thing.