11 Quotes & Sayings By Ernst F Schumacher

Ernst F. Schumacher was born in 1873 in Gorleben, Germany. He studied physics and engineering at the University of Berlin, and later became a lecturer at the Technical University in Aachen. After World War I, he became an editor of the magazine "Wirtschaft und Technik" Read more

After the Nazis took over Germany in 1933, Schumacher resigned his professorship and left for England, where he served as an editor of the "Financial Chronicle" and taught at the London School of Economics. He returned to Germany in 1938 shortly before Hitler annexed Austria, and was arrested by the Gestapo on 5 May 1945. He died in Darmstadt on 15 September 1950.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and...
1
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction. Ernst F. Schumacher
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The real problems of our planet are not economic or technical, they are philosophical. The philosophy of unbridled materialism is being challenged by events. Ernst F. Schumacher
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What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it. Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. . Ernst F. Schumacher
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An attitude to life which seeks fulfilment in thesingle-minded pursuit of wealth - in short, materialism - does not fit into thisworld, because it contains within itself no limiting principle, while theenvironment in which it is placed is strictly limited. Ernst F. Schumacher
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To say that life is nothing but a property of certain peculiar combinations of atoms is like saying that Shakespeare's Hamlet is nothing but a property of a peculiar combination of letters. Ernst F. Schumacher
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It is quite wrong to assume that poor people are generally unwilling to change; but the proposed change must stand in some organic relationship to what they are doing already, and they are rightly suspicious of, and resistant to, radical changes proposed by town-based and office-bound innovators who approach them in the spirit of: "You just get out of my way and I shall show you how useless you are and how splendidly the job can be done with a lot of foreign money and outlandish equipment. Ernst F. Schumacher
7
It is therefore scientifically correct to say that 'natural selection has been proved to be an agent of evolutionary change' - we can, in fact, prove it by doing. But it is totally illegitimate to claim that the discovery of this mechanism - natural selection - proves that the cause of evolution 'was automatic with no room for divine guidance or design'. Ernst F. Schumacher
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Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance. Ernst F. Schumacher
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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Ernst F. Schumacher
10
Everything can be seen directly except the eye through which we see. Ernst F. Schumacher