"Your contemporaries, with their mutual throat-cutting, knew very well what they were at. The producers of the nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance at the expense of the community. If, in working to this end, he at the same time increased the aggregate wealth, that was merely incidental. It was just as feasible and as common to increase one's private hoard by practices injurious to the general welfare. One's worst enemies were necessarily those of his own trade, for, under your plan of making private profit the motive of production, a scarcity of the article he produced was what each particular producer desired."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Science fiction authors from the United StatesPolitical activistsJournalists from MassachusettsNovelists from MassachusettsChristian socialists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ch. 22
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Bellamy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Edward Bellamy
2000 – 1887
Edward Bellamy (March 26, 1850 – May 22, 1898) was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, a tale set in the distant future of the year 2000. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of at least 165 "Nationalist Clubs" dedicated to the propagation of Bellamy's political ideas and working to make them a practical reality.
98 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Edward Bellamy →
Related Quotes
"The exercise of irresponsible power, by whatever means, is tyranny, and should not be tolerated. The power which men …"
"Forgiving sins, I should have known, is not blotting them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red instead of bla…"
"A sense of utter loneliness—loneliness inevitable, crushing, eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the…"
"No girl, however coolly her blood may flow, can be pressed to a man's breast, wildly throbbing with love for her, and…"
"The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiv…"
"And, in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?...In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest intern…"
"We have no wars now, and our governments no war powers, but in order to protect every citizen against hunger, cold, a…"
"But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made certain from the first instant of her new consciousness, namely, that s…"
"Why, when the world gets to understand about it I expect that two men or two women, or a man and a woman, will come i…"
"Our economic system puts us in a position where we can follow Christ's maxim, so impossible for you, to 'take no thou…"