“If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.”

— Thomas Paine , book Rights of Man

Part 2.2 Introduction
1790s, Rights of Man, Part 2 (1792)

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Thomas Paine 262

English and American political activist 1737–1809

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“Can we grasp also that not only have inventions up to date, which would have contrived this, been neglected or misused, but that just around the corner new inventions... will, if they arc allowed, change and improve our lives out of all recognition?”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter II Planning a Model World

“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Preface
Variant: Paraphrased variant: The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
Source: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)

“The success with which we have met in all of these undertakings is a matter of universal knowledge. We are at peace with all the world. Those of this generation who passed through the World War have had an experience which will always cause them to realize what an infinite blessing peace is. We are in an era of unbounded prosperity. The financial condition of our National Government is beginning to be more easy to be borne. While many other nations and many localities within our own country are struggling with a burden of increased debts and rising taxes, which makes them seek for new sources from which by further taxation they can secure new revenues, we have made large progress toward paying off our national debt, have greatly reduced our national taxes, and been able to relieve the people by abandoning altogether many sources of national revenue. We are not required to look altogether to the future for our rewards and find in our lot nothing but sacrifices for the present. Now, here, to-day, we are all able to enjoy those benefits which come from universal peace and nation-wide prosperity.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

“Poor playthings of the man that's gone,
Surely we would not have them thrown,
Like wreckage on a barren strand,
The prey of every greedy hand.”

Frederick York Powell (1850–1904) British historian

"On a Certain Auction in 1897"
Actually 1898, of the personal effects of Lewis Carroll
Frederick York Powell, a life and a selection from his letters and occasional writings http://www.archive.org/stream/frederickyorkpow02eltouoft/frederickyorkpow02eltouoft_djvu.txt

“Maitreya will present to the world a choice: to continue as we are, in the old, greedy, selfish, very human ways, and destroy ourselves, or to demonstrate at last the divine potential in every person by grasping the realities of life: the fact of the oneness of the soul; of the oneness, therefore, of humanity as a group of souls in incarnation. This will be a revelation for most of humanity.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Awakening of Humanity (2008)

“Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim that we have a choice between cutting tax and cutting unemployment, for the two go hand in hand. It is no accident that the two most successful economies in the world, both overall and specifically in terms of job creation—those of the United States and Japan—have the lowest level of tax as a proportion of GDP. Reductions in taxation motivate new businesses and improve incentives at work. They are a principal engine of the enterprise culture, on which our future prosperity and employment opportunities depend.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/mar/18/income-tax in the House of Commons (18 March 1986)

“There is proof enough furnished by every science, but by none more than geometry, that the world to which we have been allotted is peculiarly adapted to our minds, and admirably fitted to promote our intellectual progress.”

Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880) American mathematician

Ben Yamen's Song of Geometry (1853)
Context: There is proof enough furnished by every science, but by none more than geometry, that the world to which we have been allotted is peculiarly adapted to our minds, and admirably fitted to promote our intellectual progress. There can be no reasonable doubt that it was part of the Creator's plan. How easily might the whole order have been transposed! How readily might we have been assigned to some complicated system which our feeble and finite powers could not have unravelled!

“Ethics, in our part of the world, may be considered to have advanced, at least in its pretensions, to the anthropocentric stage of evolution. Aggregation has advanced from individual to tribe, and from tribe to race, and from race to sex, and from sex to species, until to-day the ethical conception of many minds includes, with greater or less vividness and sincerity, all sexes, colors, and conditions of men.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

The fact that an animal is a human, that is, that he belongs to the hominine species of beings, entitles him, regardless of his imperfections, to some sort of consideration.
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, p. 143

“The cities in which we live in are schools of death, because they are dishuman. Each one of them has become a den of noise and of stench, for each of one has became a chaos of buildings, in which we ammass ourselves in millions, losing our life’s reasons. Unfortunates without escape, we feel to have put ourselves, willing or not, in the labyrinth of the absurd, from which we will leave only when we will die, for our destiny is to continue to multiply ourselves, only to die in great numbers. At every turn of the wheel, the cities in which we live in advance slowly one against the other, desiring only to confuse with each other: it’s a run towards the absolute chaos, in the noise and in the stench. At every turn of the wheel the price of the grounds go up, and in the labyrinth which devours the free space the revenue of the investiments builds up, day after day, hundreds of walls. It’s necessary that money give revenues and that the cities in which we live in advance, so it’s right that the houses double their height at every generation, even if the water is missing half of the days. The builders only desire to escape the destiny that they prepare for us, moving towards the countryside.”

Albert Caraco (1919–1971) French-Uruguayan philosopher

Translation from: Albert Carao (1919-1917) http://illusioncity.net/albert-caraco/ at illusioncity.net by Snake June 17, 2012
Ma confession (1975)

“Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

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Thomas Paine 262

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