The Wealth and Poverty of Nations Quotes

“Where there are kings, there must be the greatest cowards. For men’s souls are enslaved and refuse to run risks readily and recklessly to increase the power of somebody else. But independent people, taking risks on their own behalf and not on behalf of others, are willing and eager to go into danger, for they themselves enjoy the prize of victory.”
― David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

“As for me, I prefer truth to goodthink. I feel surer on my ground.”
― David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

“In India and other tropical countries I have noticed farmers, industrial labourers, and in fact all kinds of manual and office workers working in slow rhythm with long and frequent rest pauses. But in the temperate zone I have noticed the same classes of people working in quick rhythm with great vigour and energy, and with very few rest pauses. I have known from personal experience and the experience of other tropical peoples in the temperate zone that this spectacular difference in working energy and efficiency could not be due entirely or even mainly to different levels of nutrition.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“On a map of the world in terms of product or income per head, the rich countries lie in the temperate zones, particularly in the northern hemisphere; the poor countries, in the tropics and semitropics.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“The ingenuity and inventiveness of the Chinese, which have given so much to mankind—silk, tea, porcelain, paper, printing, and more—would no doubt have enriched China further and probably brought it to the threshold of modern industry, had it not been for this stifling state control. It is the State that kills technological progress in China. Not only in the sense that it nips in the bud anything that goes against or seems to go against its interests, but also by the customs implanted inexorably by the raison d’Etat. The atmosphere of routine, of traditionalism, and of immobility, which makes any innovation suspect, any initiative that is not commanded and sanctioned in advance, is unfavorable to the spirit of free inquiry.21 In short, no one was trying. Why try? Whatever the mix of factors, the result was a weird pattern of isolated initiatives and sisyphean discontinuities—up, up, up, and then down again—almost as though the society were held down by a silk ceiling. The result, if not the aim, was change-in-immobility; or maybe immobility-in-change. Innovation was allowed to go (was able to go) so far and no farther.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“But in 1497, pressure from the Roman Church and Spain led the Portuguese crown to abandon this tolerance. Some seventy thousand Jews were forced into a bogus but nevertheless sacramentally valid baptism. In 1506, Lisbon saw its first pogrom, which left two thousand “converted” Jews dead. (Spain had been doing as much for two hundred years.) From then on, the intellectual and scientific life of Portugal descended into an abyss of bigotry, fanaticism, and purity of blood.* The descent was gradual. The Portuguese Inquisition was installed only in the 1540s and burned its first heretic in 1543; but it did not become grimly unrelenting until the 1580s, after the union of the Portuguese and Spanish crowns in the person of Philip II. In the meantime, the crypto-Jews, including Abraham Zacut and other astronomers, found life in Portugal dangerous enough to leave in droves. They took with them money, commercial know-how, connections, knowledge, and—even more serious—those immeasurable qualities of curiosity and dissent that are the leaven of thought. That was a loss, but in matters of intolerance, the persecutor’s greatest loss is self-inflicted. It is this process of self-diminution that gives persecution its durability, that makes it, not the event of the moment, or of the reign, but of lifetimes and centuries. By 1513, Portugal wanted for astronomers; by the 1520s, scientific leadership had gone. The country tried to create a new Christian astronomical and mathematical tradition but failed, not least because good astronomers found themselves suspected of Judaism.12 (Compare the suspicious response to doctors in Inquisition Spain.)”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“The stress on observation and the reality principle—you can believe what you see, so long as you see what I see—paid off beyond understanding.”
― David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor

“Tabasco and other hot sauces, for instance, will render infected oysters safer for human consumption; at least they kill microorganisms in the test tube. Spices, then, were not merely a luxury in medieval Europe but also a necessity, as their market value testified.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“Remember here that Islam does not, as Christianity does, separate the religious from the secular. The two constitute an integrated whole. The ideal state would be a theocracy; and in the absence of such fulfillment, a good ruler leaves matters of the spirit and mind (in the widest sense) to the doctors of the faith. This can be hard on scientists”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“Insect-borne diseases in warm climes can be rampageous.10 Winter, then, in spite of what poets may say about it, is the great friend of humanity: the silent white killer, slayer of insects and parasites, cleanser of pests.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“In India and other tropical countries I have noticed farmers, industrial labourers, and in fact all kinds of manual and office workers working in slow rhythm with long and frequent rest pauses. But in the temperate zone I have noticed the same classes of people working in quick rhythm with great vigour and energy, and with very few rest pauses. I have known from personal experience and the experience of other tropical peoples in the temperate zone that this spectacular difference in working energy and efficiency could not be due entirely or even mainly to different levels of nutrition”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“In America, air conditioning made possible the economic prosperity of the New South. Without it, cities like Atlanta, Houston, and New Orleans would still be sleepy-time towns.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“Slavery makes other people do the hard work. It is no accident that slave labor has historically been associated with tropical and semitropical climes.* The same holds for division of labor by gender: in warm lands particularly, the women toil in the fields and tend to housework, while the men specialize in warfare and hunting; or in modern society, in coffee, cards, and motor vehicles. The aim is to shift the work and pain to those not able to say no.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“The easiest way to reduce this waste problem is not to generate heat; in other words, keep still and don’t work. Hence such social adaptations as the siesta, which is designed to keep people inactive in the heat of midday. In British India, the saying had it, only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun. The natives knew better.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“Our task (the rich countries), in our own interest as well as theirs, is to help the poor become healthier and wealthier. If we do not, they will seek to take what they cannot make; and if they cannot earn by exporting commodities, they will export people. In short, wealth is an irresistible magnet; and poverty is a potentially raging contaminant: it cannot be segregated, and our peace and prosperity depend in the long run on the well-being of others.”
― David S. Landes, Wealth And Poverty Of Nations

“Na Turquia otomana, o serviço de combate a incêndios estava entregue a companhias privadas que acudiam a correr quando soava o alarme. Competiam entre si e negociavam o preço com os donos da casa no próprio local. Enquanto as negociações prosseguiam, o incêndio atingia novas proporções e o que estava em jogo consumia-se. Ou propagava-se. Entre mesquinhez e ganância, muito incêndio em residência se converteu numa conflagração em massa.”
― David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor