Trades Quotes - page 4
‘The people' have in fact done everything that is done; they built the houses and roads and railroads and telephones and planes, they organized world‐wide cooperative institutions-the oil companies, the banks-and the postal services, and the militia companies, and the schools-what didn't ‘the people' do? What happens is that, after they do it, The Government takes it. The Government takes the roads, the postal service, the systems of communication, the banks, the markets, the stock exchanges, the insurance companies, the schools, the militia, the building trades, the telegraph and telephones, the radios, after ‘the people' have done all these things for themselves.
Rose Wilder Lane
Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, bronchitis etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course - but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout-in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.
George Orwell
It was high time for a generous benefactor to come to the relief of our necessities. Rich and poor, learned and ignorant are turning away from us. And when we try to lead back these misguided souls, neither threats nor promises, neither gentleness nor violence, nor anything else is now successful. The Penguin clergy pine in desolation; our country priests, reduced to following the humblest of trades, are shoeless, and compelled to live upon such scraps as they can pick up. In our ruined churches the rain of heaven falls upon the faithful, and during the holy offices they can hear the noise of stones falling from the arches. The tower of the cathedral is tottering and will soon fall. St. Orberosia is forgotten by the Penguins, her devotion abandoned, and her sanctuary deserted. On her shrine, bereft of its gold and precious stones, the spider silently weaves her web.
Anatole France