William Beveridge Quotes

The state is or can be master of money, but in a free society it is master of very little else.

Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction; the others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness.

The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility, in establishing a national minimum it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than the minimum for himself and his family.

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.

Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.

Unemployment is like a headache or a high temperature - unpleasant and exhausting but not carrying in itself any explanation of its cause.

Organisation of social insurance should be treated as one part only of a comprehensive policy of social progress. Social insurance fully developed may provide income security; it is an attack upon Want. But Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

Full employment does not mean literally no unemployment; that is to say, it does not mean that every man and woman in the country who is fit and free for work is employed productively every day of his or her working life ... Full employment means that unemployment is reduced to short intervals of standing by, with the certainty that very soon one will be wanted in one's old job again or will be wanted in a new job that is within one's powers.

Any proposals for the future, while they should use to the full the experience gathered in the past, should not be restricted by consideration of sectional interests established in the obtaining of that experience. Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.

The trouble in modern democracy is that men do not approach to leadership until they have lost the desire to lead anyone.

Scratch a pessimist and you will often find a defender of privilege.

There is no inherent mechanism in our present system which can with certainty prevent competitive sectional bargaining for wages from setting up a vicious spiral of rising prices under full employment.

No one believes an hypothesis except its originator but everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter.

I have spent most of my life most happily making plans for others to carry out.

Let us proportion our alms to our ability, lest we provoke God to proportion His blessings to our alms.

The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.

If the way of heaven be narrow, it is not long; and if the gate be straight, it opens into endless life.

There is a very important distinction between a critical attitude of mind (or critical faculty) and a sceptical attitude.

A cockle-fish may as soon crowd the ocean into its narrow shell, as vain man ever comprehend the decrees of God!