Friedrich List Quotes

Friedrich List — German Economist born on August 06, 1789, died on November 30, 1846

Georg Friedrich List was a leading 19th-century German-Americaneconomist who developed the "National System" or what some would call today the National System of Innovation. He was a forefather of the German historical school of economics, and considered the original European unity theorist whose ideas were the basis for the European Economic Community... (wikipedia)

An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.

But the general welfare must restrict and regulate the exertions of the individuals, as the individuals must derive a supply of their strength from social power.

It is bad policy to regulate everything... where things may better regulate themselves and can be better promoted by private exertions; but it is no less bad policy to let those things alone which can only be promoted by interfering social power.

Only now did I recognize the reciprocal relationship which exits between manufacturing power and the national system of transportation, and that the one can never develop to its fullest without the other.

The relationship I have to my fatherland is like that of mothers with crippled children: they love them all the more, the more crippled they are. Germany is the background of all my plans, the return to Germany.

Friedrich List Quotes

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