It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.
Interpretation
People often prioritize wealth over basic human needs, revealing a flaw in human nature.
This quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt highlights a critical observation about human beings and society; it suggests that material wealth tends to be prioritized and given more attention than the fundamental needs of survival, such as food. It reflects the notion that individuals may tend to complain more about their financial status than about the suffering that comes from hunger, revealing a deeper commentary on values and societal priorities.
In practice
In a speech about social priorities, one might say, 'As Franklin D. Roosevelt mentioned, it is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach, reminding us to focus on fundamental human needs.'
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
We are certain God's will is that all men share in the good things this earth produces.
What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago.
And weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and and playing guitar at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow.
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which.
Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.
And she thought then how strange it was that disaster--the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face--could be at times, such a thing of beauty.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.