Notable quotes from The Eye of the Needle

On Society

“Ultimately an institution is nothing but a set of behaviour patterns…it is created by everybody behaving in the same way…to change it is necessary for everybody…or nearly everybody, to change their behaviour”.

“Unless we can see our society in the light of other possible societies we cannot even understand how and why it works as it does, let alone judge it… Commonsense thinking obscures reality… [but] in most cases…the fallacies of commonsense thinking are not obvious”.

On South Africa

“In South Africa, whites as well as blacks are victims of the social structure…the bulk of the whites are responsible victims, who exercise coercive power to keep the structure in existence… but to forget that they are also victims would be to accept that to be…rich, greedy, and frightened of his/her fellows is the ideal way for humans to be”.

“In 1652 South Africa was inhabited from the Cape to the Limpopo by self-governing peoples. It was not logically impossible for Europeans to have requested the right to immigrate, subject to the laws of the local people, and to have offered, in return, to share their technical skills with the inhabitants”.

“It was by underpaying the tightly controlled black labour force that the mine owners were able to accumulate the capital that laid the foundation for South Africa’s industrial revolution. They saved, not by cutting back their own consumption, but by drastically limiting the share received by the black workers”.

On Capitalism:

“In a very real sense individuals are not free to choose whether to consume or not…the social system has socialized them to consume what it needs them to consume. Production is not based upon the…needs of individuals, but on the ‘needs’ of the producing firms to maximize …profit-oriented growth”.

“The worker is a means for the capitalist’s end of accumulating. Work… is designed to maximize profit, not to give…satisfaction from a meaningful task”.

“In capitalism…relations with other people are not sought as ends in themselves but as means to other ends. People use other people, rather than love other people. Each tries to manipulate the other… Instead of communicating, or sharing experiences with the other, each individual either buys the other, or sells him/herself to the other”.

 “One of the characteristics in capitalist societies is the contrast between ‘private affluence’ and ‘public squalor’. TV sets in slums, shiny cars on dirty, polluted city streets… it may be necessary to ensure that individual consumption does not conflict with…more basic forms of consumption”.

“Given limited resources, it may be necessary to channel those (to more basic needs) …a fast and efficient public transport system could be developed if there were no cars on the roads. Upkeep of roads would cost less, roads could be narrower, expensive accidents…could decrease, and …social resources would not be wasted on large cars each inhabited by one person…this would involve a conscious collective allocation of resources…Permitting cars at the inevitable expense of public transport, deprives those who cannot afford cars of any reasonable transport system at all”.

“The stability of …capitalist society rests on growth… capitalism is intrinsically growth oriented…but there are limits to growth… The limits to growth are two-fold: limits to the physical resources of the planet…and…to our ability to dispose of our own rubbish. If we continue to expand our production…without pollution control…we shall suffocate our planet”.

“Unless we end our obsession with growth and re-allocate the resources we have left to provide for our vital material needs – food, shelter and health – we can look forward to a future of famine, growing inequality, social conflict, and universal hate and fear in the struggle for survival”.

On Schooling as it has developed since the Industrial Revolution:

“At the end of their school careers they [the pupils] know a few simple falsities: That somewhere there are ‘the facts’ ready to be GIVEN to one, rather than discovered. That the world is full of authority figures, but that these are relatively inefficient and can usually be got around. That studying is NOT part of life. That they are ‘educated’. That some people make it, but most fail”.

On Learning:

“The ‘carrot and stick’ method of learning – learning by social reinforcement – has been shown to be totally inadequate. [Real] learning occurs not through reward and punishment, but through observation and limitation…the child continually trying out new roles…[where the child is involved in]the ‘progressive replacement of a single limited view of problems by the adoption of many points of view simultaneously’ ”