“The earth has everything for all human needs, but nothing for his greed.”
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Attribution note
Gandhi voiced similar anti-greed sentiments, but Snopes reports the famous greed line is not found verbatim in the Collected Works; this rephrasing ('everything for all human needs, but nothing for his greed') is another unverified variant.
Likely origin: No verbatim Gandhi source. A paraphrase of the disputed 'Earth provides enough for every man's need, not every man's greed' saying, which a search of ~100 CWMG volumes did not locate.
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The line between need and greed is where scarcity actually begins. There's plenty for what people genuinely require; the shortages come from wanting far past that. Restraint isn't deprivation — it's seeing that a finite supply can meet everyone's needs only if no one treats their wants as bottomless.
When to use it
- A family downsizes to one car and finds they never actually needed the second.
- A fishing village sets catch limits so the stock survives for every boat next season.
- A shopper unsubscribes from sale emails and buys clothes only to replace worn-out ones.