“Insurrections!—The world, with its Wealth of Nations, Supply-and-demand and such like, has of late days been terribly inattentive to that question of work and wages. We will not say, the poor world has retrograded even here: we will say rather, the world has been rushing on with such fiery animation to get work and ever more work done, it has had no time to think of dividing the wages; and has merely left them to be scrambled for by the Law of the Stronger, law of Supply-and-demand, law of Laissez-faire, and other idle Laws and Un-laws.”

— Thomas Carlyle

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

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Thomas Carlyle 481

Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian… 1795–1881

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