Leopold Kohr

small-state social brutality war tyranny power

"A small-state world would not only solve the problems of social brutality and war; it would solve the problems of oppression and tyranny. It would solve all problems arising from power."

— Leopold Kohr (1909-1994)

wrong too big

"Whenever something is wrong, something is too big."

— Leopold Kohr (1909-1994)

small beautiful

"Small is beautiful."

— Leopold Kohr (1909-1994)

wrong big stars uranium substance balance limit

“Wherever something is wrong, something is too big. If the stars in the sky or the atoms of uranium disintegrate in spontaneous explosion, it is not because their substance has lost its balance. It is because matter has attempted to expand beyond the impassable barriers set to every accumulation. Their mass has become too big. If the human body becomes diseased, it is, as in cancer, because a cell, or a group of cells, has begun to outgrow its allotted narrow limits. And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutzdity, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because huma beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units such as mobs, unions, cartels, or great powers.”

— Leopold Kohr (1909-1994)

problem our time disease size proportion small-scale cooperate

"So let us solve the great problem of our time, the disease of excessive size and uncontrollable proportions, by going back to the alternative to both right and left - that is, to a small-scale social environment with all its potential for global pluralistic cooperation and largely unaffiliated self-sufficiency, by extending not centralised contrul but by decontrolling locally centred and nourished communities, each with its own institutional nucleaus and a limited but strong and independent gravitational field."

— Leopold Kohr (1909-1994)