Subsistence Quotes - Page 4

• [P]opulation, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years, or increases in a geometrical ratio. ... [T]he means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favorable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio.

  Thomas Malthus

  Food, Mean, Science

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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.

  Washington Irving

  Maturity, Animal, Progress

  Washington Irving (1834). “The Complete Works: With a Memoir of the Author”, p.100

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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.

  Thomas Malthus

  Mean, Men, Race

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1798). “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”, p.346, The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

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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.

  Sherman Alexie

  Two, Luxury, People

  Interview with Joelle Fraser, ir.uiowa.edu. 2000.

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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.

  James G. Frazer

  Powerful, Struggle, Men

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• Every man has by the law of nature a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.

  Thomas More

  Men, Rights, Law

  Thomas More (2009). “Utopia”, p.38, Cosimo, Inc.

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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.

  Edward Gibbon

  Hands, Cities, History

  Edward Gibbon (1846). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.113

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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.

  Clive James

  Country, World, Developing Countries

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• Let women be provided with living strength of their own. Let them have the means to attack the world and wrest from it their own subsistence, and their dependence will be abolished -- that of man also.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Mean, Men, World

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• Among the multitudes will be found many who cannot discriminate between what is merely wanted and what is needed, what is necessary for bare subsistence and what is indispensable for the sake of the freedom and clarity of one's higher powers.

  Kenny Smith

  Needs, Sake, Clarity

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• Ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community where every member possesses the art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Art, Long, Community

  Abraham Lincoln (2009). “Abraham Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings”, p.328, Library of America

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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.

  Wendell Berry

  Hard Times, Eggs, People

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• We have seen Indians in immense numbers, and all those on this coast of the Pacific contrive to make a good subsistence on various seeds, and by fishing.

  Junipero Serra

  Fishing, Numbers, Coast

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