Only Quotations: The Very Poor, Love and Money

Howards End (1910) by E. M. Forster

Chapter 6

"We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet."*

Chapter 7

"It's only when we see someone near us tottering that we realize all that an independent income means"

"... I began to think that the very soul of the world is economic, and the lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin."*

"I'm tired of these rich people who pretend to be poor, and think it shows a nice mind to ignore the piles of money that keep their feet about the waves."

Love and Money (1920) by Richard Rorty

"We are beginning at a loss for the world scenarios which cross the north-south border, largely because of the scary population growth statistics for countries such as Indonesia, India and Haiti. This part of the planet is becoming increasingly unthinkable. We are more and more tempted to turn it over to the statisticians, and to the sort of poet whom we call 'the ethnologist'.

"We should remind ourselves, as Forster reminded us, that love is not enough - that the Marxist were absolutely right about one thing: the soul of history is economics. All the talk in the world about the need to abandon 'technological rationality' and to stop 'commodifying', about the need for 'new values' or for 'non-Western ways of thinking', is not going to bring more money to Indian villages. As long as the villagers have enough Weberian means-end rationality to see that they need eight children such talk is not to any point. All the love in the world, all the attempts to abandon 'Eurocentrism', or 'liberal individualism', all the 'politics of diversity', all the talk about cuddling up to the natural environment will not help"

*Also quoted in Love and Money by Richard Rorty

**I have to warn you that I consider myself a student of Rorty. I've read many of his published works, and I have to say that I agree to most of his ideas. Before reading Forster's Howards End, I read Rorty's article (Love and Money). The novel is really great, and the article is excellent. This is just one example for "love is not enough" phenomenon, hehehehe.