Quotes & Sayings About Right Livelihood

The divine mandate to use the world justly and charitably, then, defines every person's moral predicament as that of a steward. But this predicament is hopeless and meaningless unless it produces an appropriate discipline: stewardship. And stewardship is hopeless and meaningless unless it involves long-term courage, perseverance, devotion, and skill. This skill is not to be confused with any accomplishment or grace of spirit or of intellect. It has to do with everyday proprieties in the practical use and care of the created things - with right livelihood. — Wendell Berry

Prostitution requires for its diminution not only laws, well enforced, to abolish the traffic in womanhood; not only better social protection against harpies who seduce young girls seeking an honest livelihood; not only better chaperonage of young girls in exposed occupations; not only better opportunities for natural enjoyment of youthful pleasure under morally safe conditions; not only these - but most of all, greater power on the part of the average young girl to earn her own support under right conditions and for a living wage. — Anna Garlin Spencer

I think the work in front of us is the first work task given our forbearers, which is to care for the garden. Now because it's the first thing commanded, maybe it's the first thing forgotten. But it is the first admonition and it is absolutely unequivocal. It is part of right livelihood. — Wes Jackson

If the world is made to furnish each individual with the means of livelihood and the instruments for his growth and progress, each man has therefore the right to find in the world what is necessary for himself. The recent Council reminded us of this: "God intended the earth and all that it contains for the use of every human being and people. Thus, as all men follow justice and unite in charity, created goods should abound for them on a reasonable basis." — Pope Paul VI

No man ought to own more property than needed for his livelihood; the rest, by right, belonged to the state. — Benjamin Franklin

It is more important to find out what you are giving to society than to ask what is the right means of livelihood. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Is it not necessary for each to know for oneself what is the right means of livelihood? If we were avaricious, envious, seeking power, then our means of livelihood will correspond to our inward demands and so produce a world of competition, ruthlessness, oppression, ultimately ending in war. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

For the world order to be one of peace and justice, for the global village to be a theater of right livelihood, it is imperative that a new and proactive spiritual vision commensurate to the challenges of the emerging world order be enunciated without delay. — Agnivesh

Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man. — Aung San Suu Kyi

For better or worse, we are the Court of Appeals for the Hollywood Circuit. Millions of people toil in the shadow of the law we make, and much of their livelihood is made possible by the existence of intellectual property rights. But much of their livelihood - and much of the vibrancy of our culture - also depends on the existence of other intangible rights: The right to draw ideas from a rich and varied public domain, and the right to mock, for profit as well as fun, the cultural icons of our time. — Alex Kozinski

Moments later a huge male with a cropped mohawk came out. Rehvenge was dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit and had a black cane in his right hand. As he came slowly over to the Brotherhood's table, his patrons parted before him, partly out of respect for his size, partly out of fear from his
reputation. Everyone knew who he was and what he was capable of: Rehv was the kind of drug lord who took a personal interest in his livelihood. You crossed him and you turned up diced like something off the Food Channel. — J.R. Ward

Therefore the dignity of the human person normally demands the right to the use of earthly goods as the natural foundation for a livelihood; and to that right corresponds the fundamental obligation to grant private property, as far as possible, to all. — Pope Pius XI

Life is illuminated by right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We must not rest until right livelihood is within reach of every human being upon this earth we love and cherish. We all have a role to play in achieving this goal. — Agnivesh

So too, monks, I saw the ancient path, the ancient road traveled by the Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past. And what is that ancient path, that ancient road? It is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. — Gautama Buddha

The Noble Eight-Fold Path is the path of living in awareness. Mindfulness is the foundation. By practicing mindfulness, you can develop concentration, which enables you to attain understanding. Thanks to right concentration, you realize right awareness, thoughts, speech, action, livelihood and effort. The understanding which develops can liberate you from every shackle of suffering and give birth to true peace and joy. — Nhat Hanh

There is no easy formula for determining right and wrong livelihood, but it is essential to keep the question alive. To return the sense of dignity and honor to manhood, we have to stop pretending that we can make a living at something that is trivial or destructive and still have sense of legitimate self-worth. A society in which vocation and job are separated for most people gradually creates an economy that is often devoid of spirit, one that frequently fills our pocketbooks at the cost of emptying our souls. — Sam Keen

People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Want to get more done? Keep meditation #1 on your to-do list. — Waylon H. Lewis

So, the important thing for us to remember, when we're searching for right livelihood, is to stop looking for something to do, and start looking for something to be. And to get in touch with that part that resides deep inside of you that knows who you really are. And see what it would take to call that forth in a BEINGNESS way. — Neale Donald Walsch

The right to criticize: the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood ... Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. — Margaret Chase Smith

Our moods and insights are transitory. This current is a flow of grace moving us to our right livelihood, companions, destiny. — Julia Cameron

The encrusted religious structure is not changed by its institutional dependents--they are part of the crust. It is changed by one who goes alone to the wilderness, where he fasts and prays, and returns with cleansed vision. In going alone, he goes independent of institutions, forswearing orthodoxy ("right opinion"). In going to the wilderness he goes to the margin, where he is surrounded by the possibilities--by no means all good--that orthodoxy has excluded. By fasting he disengages his thoughts from the immediate issues of livelihood; his willing hunger takes his mind off the payroll, so to speak. And by praying he acknowledges ignorance; the orthodox presume to know, whereas the marginal person is trying to find out. He returns to the community, not necessarily with new truth, but with a new vision of the truth; he sees it more whole than before. — Wendell Berry

That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. (2) That a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. (3) That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. — Mahatma Gandhi

Don't be misled into believing that somehow the world owes you a living. The boy who believes that his parents, or the government, or any one else owes him his livelihood and that he can collect it without labor will wake up one day and find himself working for another boy who did not have that belief and, therefore, earned the right to have others work for him. — David Sarnoff

Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Families could often trace their lineage back several centuries. Their livelihood was earned from drum playing, a service considered to be dis-respectable. As members of a low caste, the drummers were forbidden to build decent houses. There were allowed to build wattle and daub huts, and to live rent-free on their patrons' properties. The right to own the country's land was restricted in this manner, a vicious condition that arose through tradition and was reinforced by law. Patterns of financial power and political hierarchy existed hand in hand. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

This is perhaps the greatest lesson that interdependence has to offer us about right livelihood (and right living in general) in the twenty-first century: no person, and no profession, comes out completely clean, ever. On the other hand, no one is inherently defiled. — Ethan Nichtern

Etatism by no means aims at the formal transformation of all ownership of the means of production into State ownership by a complete overthrow of the established legal system. Only the biggest industrial, mining, and transport enterprises are to be nationalized; in agriculture, and in medium- and small-scale industry, private property is nominally to continue. Nevertheless, all enterprises are to become State undertakings in fact. Owners are to be left the title and dignity of ownership, it is true, and to be given a right to the receipt of a 'reasonable' income, 'in accordance with their position'; but, in fact, every business is to be changed into a government office and every livelihood into an official profession. — Ludwig Von Mises