Subsistence Quotes - Page 2

• This subsistence, or manner of being of God is his one essence so far as it has personal properties.

  William Ames

  Essence, Property

  William Ames (1968). “The marrow of theology”

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• 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.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Gratitude, War, Men

  J. Robert Oppenheimer's letter to his brother Frank Oppenheimer (March 12, 1932), as quoted in "Robert Oppenheimer: Letters and Recollections" edited by Alice Kimball Smith (p. 155), 1995.

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• Men, like animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence.

  Adam Smith

  Mean, Animal, Men

  Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.5

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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.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Summer, Education, Winter

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1523, Delphi Classics

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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.

  Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

  Country, Land, Giving

  "Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth". Book by Anne Robert Jacques Turgot (§ 1), 1766.

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• Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.

  Thomas Malthus

  Science, Numbers, Population

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1959). “Population: The First Essay”, p.5, University of Michigan Press

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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.

  Stewart Brand

  Environmental, World, Poverty

  Stewart Brand (2010). “Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, RestoredWildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary”, p.41, Penguin

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• Mere physical growing up, mere mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not suffice to reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the taking of thoughtful pains are required.

  John Dewey

  Growing Up, Pain, Thoughtful

  John Dewey (2004). “Democracy and Education”, p.3, Courier Corporation

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• Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Thinking, Giving

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• It is manifestly unjust that a privileged few should continue to accumulate excess goods, squandering available resources, while masses of people are living in conditions of misery at the very lowest level of subsistence.

  Pope John Paul II

  People, Excess, Levels

  Pope John Paul II (1998). “In my own words”

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• It is not that things give meaning to words; it is that meaning makes things "things." It does not make things in their subsistence; but it does make things in their discreteness for the understanding.

  Richard M. Weaver

  Giving, Understanding, Doe

  Richard M. Weaver, Ted J. Smith (2000). “In defense of tradition: collected shorter writings of Richard M. Weaver, 1929-1963”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• And Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Flower, Men, Body

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.390

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• For society as a whole, nothing comes as a "right" to which we are "entitled." Even bare subsistence has to be produced-and produced at a cost of heavy toil for much of human history. The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it for him. The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more others have to carry their load.

  Thomas Sowell

  Work, Rights, Historical

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “The Thomas Sowell Reader”, p.74, Basic Books

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• In the developing world, it's about time that women are on the agenda. For instance, 80 percent of small-subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are women, and yet all the programs in the past were predominantly focused on men.

  Melinda Gates

  Past, Men, Agendas

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.

  Milton Friedman

  Jobs, Impossible Things, Promise

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• You will find that hardly a soul who will say that it was a bad thing. Almost everybody will say it was a good thing. 'But what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?' 'Oh, no,' they'll say, 'We couldn't possibly have free immigration today. Why, that would flood us with immigrants from India, and God knows where. We'd be driven down to a bare subsistence level.'

  Milton Friedman

  Thinking, Should Have, Soul

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• No man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone.

  John Calvin

  Moving, Men, Surveys

  John Calvin (1845). “Institutes of the Christian Religion”, p.18, Lulu.com

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• Most countries in Africa have the capacity to be great agricultural producers, but they do only subsistence production. So a family will produce for themselves and nothing more. Why? Because of the systems: The markets are not there to go beyond.

  Nicolas Berggruen

  Country, Capacity, Produce

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• Grief is, of all the passions, the one that is the most ingenious and indefatigable in finding food for its own subsistence.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Grief, Passion, Findings

  Marguerite Gardiner (countess of Blessington.) (1839). “The governess”, p.230

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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?

  Mary C. Ames

  Marriage, Mean, Independent

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• No genuine equality, no real freedom, no true manhood or womanhood can exist on any foundation save that of pecuniary independence. As a right over a man's subsistence is a power over his moral being, so a right over a woman's subsistence enslaves her will, degrades her pride and vitiates her whole moral nature.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Real, Pride, Men

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• The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Idols, Gentleman, Quality

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.48, e-artnow

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• People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should be only a means to insure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism.

  Rudolf Rocker

  Mean, Blessing, Men

  Rudolf Rocker (2004). “Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice”, p.2, AK Press

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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.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Country, Real, Government

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• Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.

  John Stuart Mill

  Punishment, Giving, Criminals

  John Stuart Mill (1849). “Principles of political economy, with some of their applications to social philosophy”, p.541

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