#Self Sufficiency Quotes

“I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm.”

“Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?”

“Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate without speech, and above speech, and that no right action of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.”

“Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.”

“You have everything you need for complete peace and total happiness right now.”

“There is a fountain inside you. Don't walk around with an empty bucket.”

“The only reward of virtue is virtue.”

“You don’t need a reason to be happy...your desire to be so is sufficient.”

“Books should stand on their own feet ... If they need shoring up by a preface here, an introduction there, they have no more right to exist than a table that needs a wad of paper under one leg in order to stand steady.”

“I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.”

“An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings...than a lazy lounger...too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labor.”

“In short I must confide in you to take such care of the men under you as an economical householder would of his own family, doingevery thing within himself as far as he can, and calling for as few supplies as possible. The less you depend for supplies from this quarter, the less you will be disappointed.”

“A farm is a good thing, when it begins and ends with itself, and does not need a salary, or a shop, to eke it out.”

“You are dreaming your thirst when the water you want is inside the big vein on your neck.”

“You already have the precious mixture that will make you well. Use it.”

“That a guardian should require another guardian to take care of him is ridiculous indeed.”

“Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.”

“My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world.”

“I believe that the yarn we spin is capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life!”

“If you give me rice, I'll eat today; if you teach me how to grow rice, I'll eat every day.”

“I do regard spinning and weaving as a necessary part of any national system of education.”

“I wouldn't go that far. But I know my way around the kitchen. I make dinner every night.”

“Only this much I knew - that under ideal conditions, true education could be imparted only by the parents, and that then there should be the minimum of outside help.”

“A country whose culture is based on nonviolence will find it necessary to have every home as much self-contained as possible.”

“You cannot wait for someone to save you, to help you, to complete you. No one can complete you. You complete yourself.”

“Don't wait for someone else to complete you. 'Jerry Maguire' was just a movie.”

“Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse.”

“The yajna of our age and for us is the spinning wheel.”

“Cent percent swadeshi gives sufficient scope for the most insatiable ambition for service and a satisfaction of every kind of talent.”

“The spinning wheel is the one thing to which all must turn to in the Indian clime for the transition stage at any rate and the vast majority must for all time.”

“All things are already complete in us. There is no greater delight than to be conscious of right within us. If one strives to treat others as he would be treated by them, he shall not fail to come near the perfect life.”

“All things are complete within ourselves.”

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.”

“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung.”

“If hand-spinning is an effective method of making India self-supporting, it must be made part of the franchise.”

“Every widow I have met has recognized in the wheel a dear forgotten friend.”

“Most happy is he who is entirely self-reliant, and who centers all his requirements in himself alone.”

“Every New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant andfluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any.”

“Everyone wants to be strong and self sufficient, but few are willing to put in the work necessary to achieve worthy goals.”

“The universal nature has no external space; but the wondrous part of her art is that though she has circumscribed herself, everything which is within her which appears to decay and to grow old and to be useless she changes into herself, and again makes other new things from these very same, so that she requires neither substance from without nor wants a place into which she may cast that which decays. She is content then with her own space, and her own matter, and her own art.”

“Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which would be more disreputable.”

“I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls.”

“Coal is not dear for the coal-miner who can use it there and then, nor is khadi dear for the villager who manufactures his own khadi.”

“The spinning wheel is as much a necessity of Indian life as air and water.”

“The best of all teachers is the one who helps people so that eventually they don't need him.”

“Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.”

“Hunger is the argument that is driving India to the spinning wheel.”

“Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.”

“Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.”

“Unless the human race perspire more than I do, there is no occasion to live by the sweat of their brow. If men cannot get on without money (the smallest amount will suffice), the truest method of earning it is by working as a laborer at one dollar per day. You are least dependent so; I speak as an expert, having used several kinds of labor.”