Friedrich List quotes

Friedrich List was a German economist and theorist, famous for his advocacy of economic nationalism and protectionism. His work laid the foundation for the development of the "National System" of political economy, which influenced industrial policy in many countries. He argued that nations should protect their emerging industries from foreign competition to achieve long-term prosperity. Here are 24 of his quotes:

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.

Friedrich List

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.

Friedrich List

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

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.

Friedrich List

But politics demands, in the interests of each separate nation, guarantees for its independence and continued existence, special regulations to help its progress in culture, prosperity, and power, to build its society into a perfectly complete and harmoniously developed body politic, self-contained and independent.

Friedrich List

It is indeed strange to see at the same time the present Ministry of England ... jealously watch to prevent every progress of other rival nations, particularly of the United States.

Friedrich List

We have already observed that the fortunes or misfortunes of individuals are dependent upon the maintenance of the independence and progress of the whole nation.

Friedrich List

The nation ... must sacrifice some present advantages in order to insure to itself future ones.

Friedrich List

Educational facilities will be extended and better standards of morality will be established. Political institutions, too, will be improved. In this way a backward nation can develop into a progressive state.

Friedrich List

From the nation they draw all the benefits of civilisation, enlightenment, progress, and social and political institutions, as well as advances in the arts and sciences.

Friedrich List

... Following these examples every responsible government should strive to remove those obstacles that hinder the progress of civilisation and should stimulate the growth of those economic forces that a nation carries in its bosom.

Friedrich List

... the Union can grow powerful only by fostering the manufacturing interest. This, Sir, I think the true American political economy.

Friedrich List

For the more rapid the growth of a spirit of industrial invention and improvement, of social and political reform, the wider becomes the gap between stationary and progressive nations, and the more dangerous it is to remain on the further side.

Friedrich List

... I believe it to be a duty of the General Convention of Harrisburg, not only to support the wool growers and wool manufacturers, but to lay the root at the axe of the tree, by declaring the system of Adam Smith to be erroneous – by declaring war against it on the part of the American System – ...

Friedrich List

Finally, a nation should not regard the progress of industries from a purely economic point of view. Manufactures become a very important part of the nation‘s political and cultural heritage.

Friedrich List

The world has not been hindered in its progress, but immensely aided in it, by England.

Friedrich List

It is no more than fair that England, now that she has attained the culminating point of her industrial growth and progress, should restore again to the nations of Continental Europe a portion of those productive forces which she originally derived from them.

Friedrich List

The economic betterment of a nation which is at a low level of intelligence and culture, or in which the population is small in relation to the extent and productivity of its territory, is best accomplished through free trade with highly cultivated, rich, and industrious nations. In the case of such a country every restriction of trade, intended to plant manufacturing industry within its borders, is premature and injurious, not only to the welfare of mankind in general, but to the progress of the nation itself. Only when the intellectual, political, and economic education of the nation has so far advanced as a result of free trade that its further progress would be checked and hindered by the import of foreign manufactures and the lack of a sufficient market for its own goods, can protective measures be justified.

Friedrich List

The more a person learns how to use the forces of nature for his own purposes, by means of perfecting the sciences and the invention and improvement of machines, the more he will produce.

Friedrich List

The concentration and reciprocal effect of industry and agriculture conjoin in a growth of productive powers, which increases more in geometrical than in arithmetical proportion.

Friedrich List

Look around, and you see everywhere the exertions and acts of individuals restricted, regulated, or promoted, on the principle of the common welfare.

Friedrich List