We define poverty as a shortage of material goods, which justifies the production of more and more material goods. It does not occur to us that it might be more realistic to regard it as an aberrant situation in which more material goods are required than can actually be produced, for then the solution would be to create those socio-economic conditions in which less goods rather than more were required.
We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us. And good boots are hard to come by." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 2
To see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. He keeps up appearances, it is true, but I feel the pinch. He gives a revolution as a merchant, whose credit is low, gives a ball.
We're creating new supply for the world, which is key. If we didn't get more tonnes into the system, your next motorcar is going to cost more because the aluminum cost is going to be higher.
All intelligent problem solvers are subject to the same ultimate constraints - limitations on space, time, and materials.
When you do a show five days a week and one night a week, the way I was doing, you use up so much music every day that pretty soon you find yourself hustling for material.
A lot of people have no access to beauty. When I was growing up, my mother had only a few pretty things to look at.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
It's as easy to give away a million as a hundred if you have not got either.
What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires - how many aspirations after goodness and truth - how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!
It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
For the vast majority of world history, human life - both culture and biology - was shaped by scarcity. Food, clothing, shelter, tools, and pretty much everything else had to be farmed or fabricated, at a very high cost in time and energy.
We can invoke spiritual compensation when we find ourselves in situations of material lack. In other words, what happens for most of us is that we are tempted and we are taught, we are trained as it were, to meet limited circumstances with limited thought.
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
