These are some quotes from E.F. Schumacher’s series of books, Small is Beautiful:
“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.”
“Ever bigger machines, entailing ever 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 non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.”
“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 seems 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.”
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