# Quote — Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

> Their system of unorganized and antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the idea of increasing the individual hoard gives place to the idea of increasing the common stock can industrial combination be realized, and the acquisition of wealth really begin. Even if the principle of share and share alike for all men were not the only humane and rational basis for a society, we should still enforce it as economically expedient, seeing that until the disintegrating influence of self-seeking is suppressed no true concert of industry is possible.'

- Author: [Edward Bellamy](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy.md)
- Book: [Looking Backward](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Looking_Backward:_2000%E2%80%931887#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward/their-system-of-unorganized

## More from this book

> The actual expense of your colleges appears to have been very low, and would have been far lower if their patronage had been greater. The higher education nowadays is as cheap as the lower, as all grades of teachers, like all other workers, receive the same support. We have simply added to the common school system of compulsory education, in vogue in Massachusetts a hundred years ago, a half dozen higher grades, carrying the youth to the age of twenty-one and giving him what you used to call the education of a gentleman, instead of turning him loose at fourteen or fifteen with no mental equipment beyond reading, writing, and the multiplication table.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward/the-actual-expense.md)

> The greater efficiency which education gives to all sorts of labor, except the rudest, makes up in a short period for the time lost in acquiring it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward/the-greater-efficiency.md)

> Presently, too, as I observed the wretched beings about me more closely, I perceived that they were all quite dead. Their bodies were so many living sepulchres. On each brutal brow was plainly written the hic jacet of a soul dead within.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-bellamy/looking-backward/presently-too-as-i-observed.md)