Impoverishment Quotes

“The global industrial economy is the engine for massive environmental degradation and massive human (and nonhuman) impoverishment.”

“Once I finally understand the immensity of my own impoverishment, I am finally in a position to see the enormity of God’s majesty.”

“Life in society is when everyone is there and no one is present. Life in society is when everyone obeys what no one wants. Writing is a way of escaping this impoverishment, a variation on solitude like love or gambling – a principle of insubordination, a virtue of childhood.”

“Why do people often feel bad in good environments and good in bad environments? Why did Mother Teresa think that affluent Westerners often seemed poorer than the Calcutta poor, the poorest of the poor? The paradox comes to pass because the impoverishments and enrichments of a self in a world are not necessarily the same as the impoverishments and enrichments of an organism in an environment.”

“When we experience inner impoverishment, love for another too easily becomes hunger: for reassurance, for acclaim, for affirmation of our worth.”

“There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.”

“While art should never become exclusionary and elitist, any culture which fails to support its artists is only contributing to its own impoverishment. (Beyond Religion, p. 122)”

“Let me be strong, for to be anything else is to languish in the abyss of compromise and to descend to places of impoverishment so destitute that they will squelch my soul and crush my heart.”

“To love in the sense of passion-love is the contrary of to live. It is an impoverishment of one's being, an askesis without sequel, an inability to enjoy the present without imagining it as absent, a never-ending flight from possession.”

“The indifference, callousness, and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering towards animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of human spirit.”