Quotes About Privation

In Chicago [during the Great Depression], a crowd of some fifty hungry men fought over barrel of garbage set outside the back door of restaurant

The more men are freed from privation; the more telegraphs, telephones, books, papers, and journals there are; the more means there will be of diffusing inconsistent lies and hypocrisies, and the more disunited and consequently miserable will men become, which indeed is what we see actually taking place.

Man is created for happiness, that happiness lies in himself, in the satisfaction of simple human needs; and that all unhappiness is due, not to privation but to superfluity.

Formerly each separate desire caused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by a bodily function that gave pleasure; but now privation and suffering received no satisfaction, and the attempt at satisfaction caused new suffering.

In the morning we received some very thin coffee. For lunch we had potato soup with a few pieces of meat in it, in the evening we had a very thin meat soup with some potatoes in it.

It was a poor town—the meagerly stocked market was proof of that.

Everyone eats his words by himself although we're all eating together. There's no thought for the hunger of others, you can't hunger together. Cabbage soup was our main food, but it mainly took the meat from our bones and the sanity from our minds. The hunger angel ran around in hysterics. He lost all proportion, growing more in a single day than grass in an entire summer or snow in an entire winter.

I don't need a day pass, I have the camp, and the camp has me. All I need is a bunk and Fenya's bread and my tin bowl. I don't even need Leo Auberg.

Vegetables were almost nonexistent, and what passed for meat was either rancid or pure fat. The men were surviving on crackers and moldy flour. Lee was beginning to understand what this meant to the fighting strength of the army.

asceticism or starvation

No victorious revolution without an idea. Certainly! But just as certainly: It is not the idea which makes a revolution, but privation which causes it to break out. And once under way, it deviates from the idea.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

John Maynard Keynes urged re-negotiation of the terms. In his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, published in 1919, he said that: 'Great privation and great risks to society have become unavoidable.' A new approach was needed to 'promote the re-establishment of prosperity and order, instead of leading us deeper into misfortune.

He is so poor that he could not keep a dog.

I got up one Christmas morning and we didn't have nothing to eat. We didn't have an apple, we didn't have an orange, we didn't have a cake, we didn't have nothing.

The person whose stomach is full does not know what a hungry person feels.

There is not much difference between a greedy person and a pauper.

Poverty is the worst form of death.

Nous avons aussi appris que la plus grande mutilation que l'on puisse faire à l'homme, c'est de le priver de toute insécurité. L'insécurité nous a forcés à tirer de nous-mêmes des richesses que nous ne soupçonnions pas : imagination, créativité, résistance physique et psychique, victoire sur les privations de toutes sortes, les inconforts. (p.231)

En realidad no hay otro infierno que este, el que sufrimos nosotros, con la miseria, los salarios exiguos, humillantes, las condiciones de trabajo y las jornadas agotadoras, con la enfermedad de nuestros hijos y con la falta de comida y medicinas.

You said, "Suffer through privation, But don't lose your honor." See—my memory is certain. You're pleased I've learned that saying? Must I shoulder now a burden Of despair this springtime? Send your blessing down, my darlings.

One did not complain about having in abundance that which others wished desperately to obtain.

T]he world springs out of a want, out of privation, but it is false speculation to make this privation an ontological being.

Whoever desires is always poor.