Quotes from book
A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed
E. F. Schumacher

A Guide for the Perplexed is a short book by E. F. Schumacher, published in 1977. The title is a reference to Maimonides's The Guide for the Perplexed. Schumacher himself considered A Guide for the Perplexed to be his most important achievement, although he was better known for his 1973 environmental economics bestseller Small Is Beautiful, which made him a leading figure within the ecology movement. His daughter wrote that her father handed her the book on his deathbed, five days before he died and he told her "this is what my life has been leading to". As the Chicago Tribune wrote, "A Guide for the Perplexed is really a statement of the philosophical underpinnings that inform Small is Beautiful".

“To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence.”

E. F. Schumacher book A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed

“Anything that we can destroy, but are unable to make is, in a sense, sacred, and all our 'explanations' of it do not explain anything.”

E. F. Schumacher book A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed

“From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the sub-human, surrender to the forces of evil.”

E. F. Schumacher book A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed

“From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a 'disutility'; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice.”

E. F. Schumacher book A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed

“The Buddhist view, “takes the function of work to be at least threefold”: “to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.””

E. F. Schumacher book A Guide for the Perplexed

A Guide for the Perplexed

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