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Edward Bellamy

92 quotes

“Forgiving sins, I should have known, is not blotting them out. The blood of Christ only turns them red instead of black. It leaves them in the record. It leaves them in the memory.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A sense of utter loneliness—loneliness inevitable, crushing, eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the infinite void of unconsciousness—enfolded him as a pall. Life lay like an incubus on his bosom. He shuddered at the thought that death might overlook him, and deny him its refuge.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And, in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?...In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest international misunderstanding, to seize upon the bodies of citizens and deliver them over by hundreds of thousands to death and mutilation, wasting their treasures the while like water; and all this oftenest for no imaginable profit to the victims.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have no wars now, and our governments no war powers, but in order to protect every citizen against hunger, cold, and nakedness, and provide for all his physical and mental needs, the function is assumed of directing his industry for a term of years. No, Mr. West, I am sure on reflection you will perceive that it was in your age, not in ours, that the extension of the functions of governments was extraordinary. Not even for the best ends would men now allow their governments such powers as were then used for the most maleficent.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But one thing it opened her eyes to, and made certain from the first instant of her new consciousness, namely, that since she loved him she could not keep her promise to marry him.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 in here, and say to me, 'We have quarrelled and outraged each other, we have injured our friend, our wife, our husband; we regret, we would forgive, but we cannot, because we remember. Put between us the atonement of forgetfulness, that we may love each other as of old.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The difference between the past and present selves of the same individual is so great as to make them different persons for all moral purposes. That single fact we were just speaking of—the fact that no man would care for vengeance on one who had injured him, provided he knew that all memory of the offence had been blotted utterly from his enemy's mind—proves the entire proposition. It shows that it is not the present self of his enemy that the avenger is angry with at all, but the past self. Even in the blindness of his wrath he intuitively recognizes the distinction between the two.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even was possible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it always would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was no doubt the common opinion of thoughtful men that society was approaching a critical period which might result in great changes. The labor troubles, their causes, course, and cure, took lead of all other topics in the public prints, and in serious conversation.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nervous tension of the public mind could not have been more strikingly illustrated than it was by the alarm resulting from the talk of a small band of men who called themselves anarchists, and proposed to terrify the American people into adopting their ideas by threats of violence, as if a mighty nation which had but just put down a rebellion of half its own numbers, in order to maintain its political system, were likely to adopt a new social system out of fear.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of things, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my class. The particular grievance I had against the working classes at the time of which I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponing my wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling toward them.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cities of that period were rather shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make them splendid, which I would not be so rude as to question, the general poverty resulting from your extraordinary industrial system would not have given you the means. Moreover, the excessive individualism which then prevailed was inconsistent with much public spirit. What little wealth you had seems almost wholly to have been lavished in private luxury. Nowadays, on the contrary, there is no destination of the surplus wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy in equal degree.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hold the period of youth sacred to education, and the period of maturity, when the physical forces begin to flag, equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Buying and selling is essentially antisocial.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The nation guarantees the nurture, education, and comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Badly off as the men, too, were in your day, they were more fortunate than their mothers and wives.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An American credit card is just as good in Europe as American gold used to be.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The equal wealth and equal opportunities of culture which all persons now enjoy have simply made us all members of one class.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever her sorrow had once been, for nearly a century she had ceased to weep, and, my sudden passion spent, my own tears dried away. I had loved her very dearly in my other life, but it was a hundred years ago! I do not know but some may find in this confession evidence of lack of feeling, but I think, perhaps, that none can have had an experience sufficiently like mine to enable them to judge me.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You will see...many very important differences between our methods of education and yours, but the main difference is that nowadays all persons equally have those opportunities of higher education which in your day only an infinitesimal portion of the population enjoyed. We should think we had gained nothing worth speaking of, in equalizing the physical comfort of men, without this educational equality....”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it took half the revenue of the nation, nobody would grudge it, nor even if it took it all save a bare pittance. But in truth the expense of educating ten thousand youth is not ten nor five times that of educating one thousand. The principle which makes all operations on a large scale proportionally cheaper than on a small scale holds as to education also.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greater efficiency which education gives to all sorts of labor, except the rudest, makes up in a short period for the time lost in acquiring it.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Manual labor meant association with a rude, coarse, and ignorant class of people. There is no such class now.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No single thing is so important to every man as to have for neighbors intelligent, companionable persons. There is nothing, therefore, which the nation can do for him that will enhance so much his own happiness as to educate his neighbors.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To educate some to the highest degree, and leave the mass wholly uncultivated, as you did, made the gap between them almost like that between different natural species, which have no means of communication. What could be more inhuman than this consequence of a partial enjoyment of education!”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your system was liable to periodical convulsions...business crises at intervals of five to ten years, which wrecked the industries of the nation.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My friends, if you would see men again the beasts of prey they seemed in the nineteenth century, all you have to do is to restore the old social and industrial system, which taught them to view their natural prey in their fellow-men, and find their gain in the loss of others. No doubt it seems to you that no necessity, however dire, would have tempted you to subsist on what superior skill or strength enabled you to wrest from others equally needy.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the ministers of religion were not exempt from this cruel necessity. While they warned their flocks against the love of money, regard for their families compelled them to keep an outlook for the pecuniary prizes of their calling. Poor fellows, theirs was indeed a trying business, preaching to men a generosity and unselfishness which they and everybody knew would, in the existing state of the world, reduce to poverty those who should practice them, laying down laws of conduct which the law of self-preservation compelled men to break.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The festering mass of human wretchedness about me offended not now my senses merely, but pierced my heart like a knife, so that I could not repress sighs and groans. I not only saw but felt in my body all that I saw. Presently, too, as I observed the wretched beings about me more closely, I perceived that they were all quite dead. Their bodies were so many living sepulchres. On each brutal brow was plainly written the hic jacet of a soul dead within.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Could they be reasoning beings, who did not see the folly which, when the product is made and ready for use, wastes so much of it in getting it to the user? If people eat with a spoon that leaks half its contents between bowl and lip, are they not likely to go hungry?”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I looked, horror struck, from one death's head to another, I was affected by a singular hallucination. Like a wavering translucent spirit face superimposed upon each of these brutish masks I saw the ideal, the possible face that would have been the actual if mind and soul had lived.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was moved with contrition as with a strong agony, for I had been one of those who had endured that these things should be. Therefore now I found upon my garments the blood of this great multitude of strangled souls of my brothers. The voice of their blood cried out against me from the ground. Every stone of the reeking pavements, every brick of the pestilential rookeries, found a tongue and called after me as I fled: What hast thou done with thy brother Abel?”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do you not know that close to your doors a great multitude of men and women, flesh of your flesh, live lives that are one agony from birth to death? Listen! their dwellings are so near that if you hush your laughter you will hear their grievous voices, the piteous crying of the little ones that suckle poverty, the hoarse curses of men sodden in misery turned half-way back to brutes, the chaffering of an army of women selling themselves for bread. With what have you stopped your ears that you do not hear these doleful sounds?”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The folly of men, not their hard-heartedness, was the great cause of the world's poverty. It was not the crime of man, nor of any class of men, that made the race so miserable, but a hideous, ghastly mistake, a colossal world-darkening blunder. And then I showed them how four fifths of the labor of men was utterly wasted by the mutual warfare, the lack of organization and concert among the workers.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On no other stage are the scenes shifted with a swiftness so like magic as on the great stage of history when once the hour strikes.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Looking Backward was written in the belief that the Golden Age lies before us and not behind us.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Government is actually now what it nominally was in the America of your day--the servant, tool, and instrument by which the people give effect to their will, itself being without will.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power over others is necessarily demoralizing to the master and degrading to the subject.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was not till the kings had been shorn of power and the interregnum of sham democracy had set in, leaving no virile force in the state or the world to resist the money power, that the opportunity for a world-wide plutocratic despotism arrived.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Put workingmen in the places of the capitalists and they would have done just as the capitalists were doing. In fact, whenever workingmen did become capitalists they were commonly said to make the hardest sort of masters.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The slave received subsistence--clothing and shelter--and the wage-earner who could get more than these out of his wages was rarely fortunate. The rate of wages, except in new countries and under special conditions and for skilled workers, kept at about the subsistence point, quite as often dropping below as rising above. The main difference was that the master expended the subsistence wage of the chattel slave for him while the earner expended it for himself.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The theory that a person has a right in dealing with his fellows to take advantage of his superior abilities is nothing other than a slightly more roundabout expression of the doctrine that might is right.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the worker of special ability, who might hope to gain most by it, could not hope to gain so much as he would lose in common with others by sacrificing the increased efficiency of the industrial machinery that would result from the sentiment of solidarity and public spirit among the workers arising from a feeling of complete unity of interest.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you own the things men must have, you own the men who must have them.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The old so-called ethics of property absolutely overlooked the whole ethical side of the subject--namely, its bearing on human relations.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source