William Morris

c. 1883–1888

Their wordsWar or competition, whichever you please to call it, means at the best pursuing your own advantage at the cost of some one else’s loss, and in the process of it you must not be sparing of destruction even of your own possessions, or you will certainly come by the worse in the struggle.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsFor what I want you to understand is this: that in every civilized country at least there is plenty for all—is, or at any rate might be.  Even with labour so misdirected as it is at present, an equitable distribution of the wealth we have would make all people comparatively comfortable; but that is nothing to the wealth we might have if labour were not misdirected.

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c. 1883–1888

innovation

Their wordsSo I say that, in spite of our inventions, no worker works under the present system an hour the less on account of those labour-saving machines, so-called.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsI don’t quite admit that; it is the allowing machines to be our masters and not our servants that so injures the beauty of life nowadays.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsThe real masters of Society, the real tyrants of the people, are the Landlords and Capitalists, whom your political triumph would not interfere with.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsThose who think that they can deal with our present system in this piecemeal way very much underrate the strength of the tremendous organization under which we live, and which appoints to each of us his place, and if we do not chance to fit it, grinds us down till we do.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsI say that our work lies quite outside Parliament, and it is to help to educate the people by every and any means that may be effective; and the knowledge we have to help them to is threefold—to know their own, to know how to take their own, and to know how to use their own.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsThe workman of to-day, if he could realize the position of his forerunner, has some reason to envy him: the feudal serf worked hard, and lived poorly, and produced a rough livelihood for his master; whereas the modern workman, working harder still, and living little if any better than the serf, produces for his master a state of luxury of which the old lord of the manor never dreamed.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsYet this we know, that ahead of us, with nothing betwixt us except such incidents as are necessary to its development, lies the inevitable social revolution, which will bring about the end of mastery and the triumph of fellowship.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsIt is impossible to see how destruction of privilege can stop short of absolute equality of condition; pure Communism is the logical deduction from the imperfect form of the new society, which is generally differentiated from it as Socialism.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsThey propose to themselves the impossible problem of raising the inferior or exploited classes into a position in which they will cease to struggle against the superior classes, while the latter will not cease to exploit them.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsIn other words, I believe that art cannot be the result of external compulsion; the labour which goes to produce it is voluntary, and partly undertaken for the sake of the labour itself, partly for the sake of the hope of producing something which, when done, shall give pleasure to the user of it.

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c. 1883–1888

happiness

Their wordsTherefore the Aim of Art is to increase the happiness of men, by giving them beauty and interest of incident to amuse their leisure, and prevent them wearying even of rest, and by giving them hope and bodily pleasure in their work; or, shortly, to make man’s work happy and his rest fruitful.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsAt the risk of being accused of sentimentality, I will say that since this is so, since the work which produces the things that should be matters of art is but a burden and a slavery, I exult in this at least, that it cannot produce art; that all it can do lies between stark utilitarianism and idiotic sham.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsIn short, it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself—a convenient belief to those who live on the labour of others.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsThis is a larger body of workers than might be supposed, for it includes amongst others all those engaged in what I should call competitive salesmanship, or, to use a less dignified word, the puffery of wares, which has now got to such a pitch that there are many things which cost far more to sell than they do to make.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsThese things, whoever may gainsay me, I will for ever refuse to call wealth: they are not wealth, but waste.

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c. 1883–1888

Their wordsTo compel a man to do day after day the same task, without any hope of escape or change, means nothing short of turning his life into a prison-torment.

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c. 1883–1888

democracy

Their wordsNo, it is not Absolutism and Democracy as the French Revolution understood those two words that are the enemies now: the issue is deeper than it was; the two foes are now Mastership and Fellowship.

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