George Fitzhugh Quotes

Money is the great weapon in a free, equal and competitive society, which skill and capital employ in the war of the wits, to exploitate and oppress the poor, the improvident, and the weak-minded. Its evil effects are greatly aggravated by the credit and banking systems.

…the great truth which lies at the foundation of all society—that every man has property in his fellow-man!

[Man] is not free because he has no where that he may rightfully lay his head. Private property has monopolized the earth, and destroyed both his liberty and equality.

Socialism proposes to do away with free competition; to afford protection and support at all times to the laboring class; to bring about, at least, a qualified community of property, and to associated labor. All these purposes, slavery fully and perfectly attains.

In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition.

No one will contend that negroes, for instance, should roam at large in puris naturalibus, with the apes and tigers of Africa, and ‘worry and devour each other.’ Nor are they fitted for an Athenian democracy. What form of government short of domestic slavery will suit their wants and capacities?

Free trade or political economy is the science of free society, and socialism is the science of slavery.

Property is not a natural and divine, but conventional right; it is the mere creature of society and law… if private property generally were so used to injure, instead of promote public good, then society might and ought to destroy the whole institution.

The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm, work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are opposed neither by care nor labor.

The capitalist cheapens their wages; they compete with and underbid each other, for employed they must be on any terms. This war of the rich with the poor and the poor with one another, is the morality which political economy inculcates.

But slavery does, in practice as well as in theory, acknowledge and enforce the right of all to be comfortably supported from the soil. There was, we repeat, no pauperism in Europe till feudal slavery was abolished.

Men are not ‘born entitled to equal right! It would be far nearer the truth to say, ‘that some were born with saddles on their backs, and others booted and spurred to ride them’—and the riding does them good.

Liberty of the press, liberty of speech, freedom of religion, or rather freedom from religion, and the unlimited right of private judgement have borne no good fruit, and many bad ones.

What a glorious thing to man is slavery, when want, misfortune, old age, debility and sickness overtake him.

The weak in mind or body require guidance, support and protection; they must obey and work for those who protect and guide them—they have a natural right to guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Nature has made them slaves, all that law and government can do, is to regulate, modify and mitigate their slavery.