“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”
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Attribution note
Per Snopes, the exact line is not in Gandhi's Collected Works; his close aide Pyarelal reported the sentiment. It is a second-hand report/paraphrase, not verbatim Gandhi. Keep as commonly attributed, not verified.
Likely origin: Reported by Gandhi's secretary Pyarelal (Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase, 1958) as his view; the exact wording is not found in Gandhi's own writings (Snopes).
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The line separating need from greed is where sustainability actually lives. Shortage, in this view, is rarely about what the land can produce and mostly about appetite that never settles — so the remedy is less extraction and more restraint, matching what you take to what you truly require.
When to use it
- A household that buys only what it will eat cuts its grocery waste roughly in half.
- A town rationing water in a drought has plenty once neighbors stop over-filling their pools.
- Someone who keeps a working phone for four years frees up money and spares the landfill.