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Subsistence Quotes

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Subsistence Quotes

“You put a hard question on the virtue of discipline. What you say is true: I do value it—and I think that you do too—more than for its earthly fruit, proficiency. I think that one can give only a metaphysical ground for this evaluation; but the variety of metaphysics which gave an answer to your question has been very great, the metaphysics themselves very disparate: the bhagavad gita, Ecclesiastes, the Stoa, the beginning of the Laws, Hugo of St Victor, St Thomas, John of the Cross, Spinoza. This very great disparity suggests that the fact that discipline is good for the soul is more fundamental than any of the grounds given for its goodness. I believe that through discipline, though not through discipline alone, we can achieve serenity, and a certain small but precious measure of freedom from the accidents of incarnation, and charity, and that detachment which preserves the world which it renounces. I believe that through discipline we can learn to preserve what is essential to our happiness in more and more adverse circumstances, and to abandon with simplicity what would else have seemed to us indispensable; that we come a little to see the world without the gross distortion of personal desire, and in seeing it so, accept more easily our earthly privation and its earthly horror—But because I believe that the reward of discipline is greater than its immediate objective, I would not have you think that discipline without objective is possible: in its nature discipline involves the subjection of the soul to some perhaps minor end; and that end must be real, if the discipline is not to be factitious. Therefore I think that all things which evoke discipline: study, and our duties to men and to the commonwealth, war, and personal hardship, and even the need for subsistence, ought to be greeted by us with profound gratitude, for only through them can we attain to the least detachment; and only so can we know peace.”

DisciplineHardshipSerenityPenanceSubsistence
Author:J. Robert Oppenheimer
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“A decade ago, critics suggested biotech crops would not be valuable in the developing world. Now 90 percent of farmers who benefit are resource-poor farmers in developing countries. These helped alleviate 7.7 million subsistence farmers in China, India, South Africa, the Philippines from abject poverty.”

WorldCountryPoorPovertyMillionsBenefitsPercentResourcesIndiaSouthCriticsChinaValuableDecadesDevelopingFarmersSouth AfricaCropsPhilippinesAlleviateDeveloping CountriesSubsistenceBiotech
Author:Clive James
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“Obviously, our most pressing need is subsistence for the most vulnerable victims of Katrina, but we should not overlook the fact that the victims of Katrina also include middle-class Americans who have saved and invested, but now face an economic crisis, .. They should be able to tap into their savings and meet this crisis without facing an unfair penalty.”

NeedsShouldFactsAbleFacesClassEconomicMiddleCrisisVictimSavedVulnerableSavingMiddle ClassUnfairPenaltiesSavingsKatrinaEconomic CrisisSubsistence
Author:Artur Davis
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“Of the laws of nature, on which the condition of man depends, that which is attended with the greatest number of consequences, is the necessity of labor for obtaining the means of subsistence, as well as the means of the greatest part of our pleasure.”

MenWellsMeanLawPleasureNumbersConditionsDependsConsequenceLaborLaws Of NatureObtainingSubsistence
Book:Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, and Law of Nations. Written for the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica
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“Since it is to the advantage of the wage-payer to pay as little as possible, even well-paid labor will have no more than what is regarded in a particular society as the reasonable level of subsistence. The lower ranks of labor will commonly have less, and if public relief were afforded even up to the wage-level of the lowest ranks of labor, that relief would compete in the labor market; check or dry up the supply of wage-labor. It would tend to render the performance of work by the wage-earner redundant.”

IfsWellsLittlesPoliticsLevelsPayEconomyParticularAdvantageLaborPerformancesPaidChecksDryLiberalismReasonableReliefLowestSubsistenceRedundantDry Up
Author:Hilaire Belloc
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“Contrary to popular stereotypes, seeking simplicity doesn't require that you become a monk, a subsistence forager, or a wild-eyed revolutionary. Nor does it mean that you must unconditionally avoid the role of consumer. Rather, simplicity merely requires a bit of personal sacrifice: an adjustment of your habits and routines within consumer society itself.”

MeanDoeBitsRolesSacrificeHabitSimplicitySeekingContraryConsumersRevolutionaryStereotypeMonkAdjustmentSubsistencePersonal Sacrifice
Author:Rolf Potts
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“Critics are a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters--who, like deer, goats and divers other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure, and retarding their progress to maturity.”

KindYoungAnimalProgressGainsLettersCriticsForestsMaturityRepublicBudGoatsDeerRobbingSubsistenceShrubs
Book:The Complete Works: With a Memoir of the Author
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“The perpetual tendency of the race of man to increase beyond the means of subsistence is one of the general laws of animated nature, which we can have no reason to expect to change.”

MenMeanReasonLawRaceIncreaseTendenciesNo ReasonPerpetualAnimatedSubsistence
Book:An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Imporvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers
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“Indians have no monopoly on environmentalism. That's one of the great myths. But we were subsistence livers. They're two different things. Environmentalism is a conscious choice and subsistence is the absence of choice. We had to use everything to survive. And now that we've been assimilated and colonized and we have luxuries and excesses, we're just as wasteful as other people.”

PeopleTwoDifferentUseChoicesConsciousMythAbsenceLuxuryDifferent ThingsExcessMonopolyEnvironmentalismLiverTwo Different ThingsSubsistence
Author:Sherman Alexie
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“For extending its sway, partly by force of arms, partly by the voluntary submission of weaker tribes, the community soon acquires wealth and slaves, both of which, by relieving some classes from the perpetual struggle for a bare subsistence, afford them an opportunity of devoting themselves to that disinterested pursuit of knowledge which is the noblest and most powerful instrument to ameliorate the lot of man.”

MenOpportunityForceCommunityWealthPowerfulClassStruggleArmsInstrumentsSlavePursuitAcquireMost PowerfulPerpetualTribesSubmissionExtendingPursuit Of KnowledgeDisinterestedSubsistence
Author:James G. Frazer
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“In populous cities, which are the seat of commerce and manufactures, the middle ranks of inhabitants, who derive their subsistence from the dexterity or labour of their hands, are commonly the most prolific, the most useful, and, in that sense, the most respectable part of the community.”

HandsCommunityCitiesHistoryMiddleSeatsLabourCommerceRespectableRoman EmpireSubsistenceDexterity
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“When you take away the subsistence economy, then your farm population is seriously exposed to the vagaries of the larger economy. As it used to be, the subsistence economy carried people through the hard times, and what you might call the housewife's economy of cream and eggs often held these farms and their families together.”

PeopleHardMightTogetherUsedEconomyPopulationUsed To BeHard TimesEggsFarmsExposedCreamHousewifeSubsistenceFamily Together
Author:Wendell Berry
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“What more degrades woman today than that she so often seeks marriage as a support? Why is the holy sacrament of love, the sanctity of the family state, so often prostituted and destroyed, but because marriage is entered upon as a necessity or a convenience? And what can so place marriage on its only true basis of mutual love, mutual fitness, mutual esteem, as for woman to make herself independent of it as a mere means of subsistence?”

MeanStatesTodayMarriageSupportHolyBasesIndependentMereEsteemDestroyedMutualSacramentsConvenienceSanctityDegradeSubsistenceMutual Love
Author:Mary C. Ames
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“The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, "All summer in the field, and all winter in the study." And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.”

IfsMenShouldSeemsMightEducationBoysTeachStudyEventsFieldsSummerStandingFellowsPlantWinterFishesPainfulSecureHuntsFellow ManSubsistenceOld English
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)
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“If the land was divided among all the inhabitants of a country, so that each of them possessed precisely the quantity necessary for his support, and nothing more; it is evident that all of them being equal, no one would work for another. Neither would any of them possess wherewith to pay another for his labour, for each person having only such a quantity of land as was necessary to produce a subsistence, would consume all he should gather, and would not have any thing to give in exchange for the labour of others.”

IfsGivingShouldPersonsCountryPaySupportLandProduceEqualLabourDividedQuantityPossessedEvidentSubsistenceBeing Equal
Author:Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune
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“Many of my contemporaries in the developed world see subsistence farming as soulful and organic, but it is a poverty trap and an environmental disaster.”

WorldPovertyEnvironmentalDisasterTrapsFarmingSoulfulSubsistence
Book:Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, RestoredWildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary
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“He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights for them I other respects.”

HelpingCommunitySupportRightsBecomingEqualMembersLaborClaimsPrivilegeDependentEqual RightsSubsistence
Book:On Liberty, Utilitarianism and Other Essays
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“The importation of foreigners into a country that has as many inhabitants as the present employments and provisions for subsistence will bear, will be in the end no increase of people, unless the new comers have more industry and frugality than the natives, and then they will provide more subsistence, and increase in the country; but they will gradually eat the natives out. Nor is it necessary to bring in foreigners to fill up any occasional vacancy in a country for such vacancy will soon be filled by natural generation.”

PeopleEndsCountryNaturalGenerationsIndustryBearsIncreaseFilledEmploymentOccasionalProvisionForeignersFrugalitySubsistenceVacancyImportation
Book:Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin
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“Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lived through times of cruel and ruthless capitalism where the workers, the masses of the population, saw themselves living in a precarious state of employment and subsistence conditions. The impact of this reality took hold and impacted the evolution of the social situation of those countries and even though that produced movements that were not exactly political movements but social movements.”

CountryStatesRealityPoliticalSocialSituationSawsConditionsMovementEvolutionMassCapitalismImpactWorkersPopulationEmploymentRuthlessRough TimesPrecariousVenezuelaSocial MovementsSubsistencePolitical MovementsBoliviaEcuador
Author:Alejandro Castro Espin
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“Real prosperity comes from everybody in the country working together in a growth mode. Real prosperity comes as a result of people's own initiative and efforts and so forth. Prosperity, if it comes from the government, is not prosperity. It's an existence or a subsistence or whatever, but it isn't prosperity.”

PeopleIfsRealCountryGovernmentTogetherGrowthResultsEffortExistenceProsperityWorking TogetherInitiativeSubsistenceCountries Working Together
Author:Rush Limbaugh
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