Top 10 Richard Henry Tawney Quotes at QuotationFun

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If preachers have not yet overtly identified themselves with the view of the natural man, expressed by an eighteenth-century writer in the words, trade is one thing and religion is another, they imply a not very different conclusion by their silence as to the possibility of collisions between them. The characteristic doctrine was one, in fact, which left little room for religious teaching as to economic morality, because it anticipated the theory, later epitomized by Adam Smith in his famous reference to the invisible hand, which saw in economic self-interest the operation of a providential plan. The existing order, except in so far as the short-sighted enactments of Governments interfered with it, was the natural order, and the order established by nature was the order established by God. Most educated men, in the middle of the 18th century, would have found their philosophy expressed in the lines of Pope: Thus God and Nature formed the general frame, And bade self-love and social be the same. Naturally, again, such an attitude precluded a critical examination of institutions, and left as the sphere of Christian charity only those parts of life which could be reserved for philanthropy, precisely because they fell outside that larger area of normal human relations, in which the promptings of self-interest provided an all-sufficient motive and rule of conduct

Interpreting Adam Smith in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism - Keeping Left - 1950.

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It is a commonplace that the characteristic virtue of Englishmen is their power sustained practical activity, and their characteristic vice a reluctance to test the quality of that activity by reference to principles.

The Acquisitive Society.

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Freedom for the pike is death to the minnows.

Equality - 1931

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Democracy is unstable as a political system as long as it remains a political system and nothing more, instead of being, as it should be, not only a form of government but a type of society, and a manner of life which is in harmony with that type. To make it a type of society requires an advance along two lines. It involves, in the first place, the resolute elimination of all forms of special privilege which favour some groups and depress other, whether their source be differences of environment, of education, or of pecuniary income. It involves, in the second place, the conversion of economic power, now often an irresponsible tyrant, into a servant of society, working within clearly defined limits and accountable for its actions to a public authority.

Interpreting Adam Smith in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism - Keeping Left - 1950.

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Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them.

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When men have gone so far as to talk as though their idols have come to life, it is time that someone broke them.

Humanity, Men, Politics, Religion, Wisdom

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If a man has important work, and enough leisure and income to enable him to do it properly, he is in possession of as much happiness as is good for any of the children of Adam.

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