These basic needs quotes will inspire you. A traditional list of immediate “basic needs” is food (including water), shelter and clothing.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and encouraging basic needs quotes, basic needs sayings, and basic needs proverbs.
Best Basic Needs Quotes
- “It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.” ~ M. F. K. Fisher
- “We have a responsibility as a state to protect our most vulnerable citizens: our children, seniors, people with disabilities. That is our moral obligation. But there is an economic justification too – we all pay when the basic needs of our citizens are unmet.” ~ John Lynch
- “It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.” ~ M. F. K. Fisher
- “The good or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted people’s highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all their basic needs.” ~ Abraham Maslow
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“Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.” ~ Abraham Maslow
- “Whether one is rich or poor, educated or illiterate, religious or nonbelieving, man or woman, black, white, or brown, we are all the same. Physically, emotionally, and mentally, we are all equal. We all share basic needs for food, shelter, safety, and love. We all aspire to happiness and we all shun suffering. Each of us has hopes, worries, fears, and dreams. Each of us wants the best for our family and loved ones. We all experience pain when we suffer loss and joy when we achieve what we seek. On this fundamental level, religion, ethnicity, culture, and language make no difference.” ~ Dalai Lama
- “The main purpose of Social Security is to redistribute wealth, to make an increasingly large number of Americans dependent on government for their basic needs in their retirement years.” ~ Neal Boortz
- “When a woman earns a dollar, the payback is higher. She’ll invest in her children, in their education, health care, and basic needs. The impact of a woman’s role in the economy benefits society at large.” ~ Andrea Jung
- “Water is one of the basic needs of survival of mankind and water can destroy it, too. That is the power of NATURE. But there is an even more powerful dimension of NATURE which is a blessing to humans; courage, intelligence, compassion and the power to stand again.” ~ Vikas Khanna
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“Right now, America’s middle class is struggling to meet their basic needs.” ~ Ruben Hinojosa
- “Thirteen thousand dollars a year is not enough to raise a family. That’s not enough to pay your bills and save for their future. That’s barely enough to provide for even the most basic needs.” ~ Thomas Carper
- “I have always believed that the ultimate purpose of economic policies and development policy is to meet the basic needs of our people. And for that, we need a fast-expanding economy.” ~ Manmohan Singh
- “Like all good citizens, the elderly and people with disabilities want to eradicate waste and fraud from government, but helping people with special needs meet their basic needs doesn’t fit this description.” ~ Joni Eareckson Tada
- “Many people, they flee not the war itself, but the consequences of the war, because they want to live, they want to have the basic needs for their livelihood, they don’t have it. They have to flee these circumstances, not necessarily the security situation itself. So, you have different reasons for the people or the refugees to leave Syria.” ~ Bashar al-Assad
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“Food, clothing and shelter — these are the basic needs. Beyond that, if you want anything, it is the beginning of self-deception.” ~ U.G. Krishnamurti
- “All lives have equal value. And so you say, ‘why do poor children die when other children don’t? Why do some people have enough nutrition or reasonable toilets and other people don’t?’ So those basic needs that, through innovation, actually it’s very affordable to bring them…to everyone.” ~ Bill Gates
- “You are rich if you have enough to meet your most basic needs. You are rich if you have access to clean water, food, shelter, love, a roof over your head.You have to count your blessings to see that you are richer than you think.” ~ Michelle Singletary
- “Storytelling has always been at the heart of being human because it serves some of our most basic needs: passing along our traditions, confessing failings, healing wounds, engendering hope, strengthening our sense of community.” ~ Parker J. Palmer
- “Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad.” ~ Thomas Sowell
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“If we ever do find a better system, I’ll be happy to call myself an anti-capitalist.” ~ Peter Singer
- “The solution of present-day problems lie in the re-establishment of a harmonious relationship between man and nature. To keep this relationship permanent we will have to digest the definition of real development: development is synonymous with culture. When we sublimate nature in a way that we achieve peace, happiness, prosperity and, ultimately, fulfilment along with satisfying our basic needs, we march towards culture.” ~ Sunderlal Bahuguna
- “What are we going to get out of life? This can understandably be a question of fundamental importance to us. We begin with certain basic needs and desires. It is important to have a comfortable home, plenty of food, a meaningful and well-paying job, comfort, companionship, and joy. However, many of us have not fully realized a simple, basic principle: for our receiving to take place, we must first give. Giving and receiving are two aspects of the same law of life.” ~ John Templeton
- “The best place to have some food set aside is within our homes, together with a little money in savings. The best welfare program is our own welfare program. Five or six cans of wheat in the home are better than a bushel in the welfare granary. … We can begin with a one week’s food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs.” ~ Gordon B. Hinckley
- “Capitalism is very far from a perfect system, but so far we have yet to find anything that clearly does a better job of meeting human needs than a regulated capitalist economy coupled with a welfare and health care system that meets the basic needs of those who do not thrive in the capitalist economy. If we ever do find a better system, I’ll be happy to call myself an anti-capitalist.” ~ Peter Singer
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“People first concern themselves with meeting their basic needs; only afterwards, do they pursue any higher needs.” ~ Abdolkarim Soroush
- “I have seen that technology has contributed to improved communication, that it’s contributed to better health care, that it’s contributed to better food supplies, that it has contributed to all the basic human needs.” ~ John Warnock
- “Our society in general has is more money equals more happiness and all the research has shown that that’s true up to a point, up until you can get your basic needs met, but then really there is other stuff that has a much bigger impact on your happiness besides just money.” ~ Tony Hsieh
- “Your business should be defined, not in terms of the product or service you offer, but in terms of what customer need your product or service fulfills. While products come and go, basic needs and customer groups stay around, i.e., the need for communication, the need for transportation, etc. What market need do you supply?” ~ Ken Blanchard
- “We can be content with simplicity because the deepest most satisfying delights God gives us through creation are free gifts from nature and from loving relationships with people. After your basic needs are met, accumulated money begins to diminish your capacity for these pleasures rather than increase them. Buying things contributes absolutely nothing to the heart’s capacity for joy.” ~ John Piper
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“Families are struggling to put bread on the table, send their kids to college and take care of their basic needs. America needs a political revolution.” ~ Bernie Sanders
- “Over the long haul, many of those people [in a difficult marriage] will begin to reciprocate, because you are meeting a basic need in their life, the need for love, and they know they don’t deserve love many times.” ~ Gary Chapman
- “One of the concepts I was having trouble illustrating was the concept that administrative systems create narrow categories of gender and force people into them in order to get their basic needs met – what I call “administrative violence.” I had images of forms with gender boxes and ID cards with gender markers, but I also wanted an image that would capture how basic services like shelters are gender segregated.” ~ Dean Spade
- “It’s definitely a challenge, but it’s even more than that. Beyond the basic need to understand what you’re saying, a computer needs to understand what you’re trying to do. So humans talking to computers present variable challenges.” ~ Peter P. Mahoney
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“A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.” ~ Yann Martel
- “For me, the best things in life – meaningful work, meaningful relationships, interesting experiences, good food, sleep, music, ideas, sex, and other basic needs and pleasures – are not, past a certain point, materially improved upon by having a lot of money.” ~ Ray Dalio
- “Our spending priorities are clearly in question when we are increasing bond indebtedness on pet projects such as museums while our infrastructure is allegedly failing. Mississippians are spending more on basic needs than ever. They don’t need their state government making that worse.” ~ Chris McDaniel
- “You may never see a Rembrandt or the Sistine Chapel, but aren’t you glad as a human being they are still there? Probably the only thing that separates us from other creatures is that we aren’t limited by our basic needs, like food and water; we have this sense of the whole.” ~ George N. Atiyeh
- “We can build an economy that does not destroy its natural support systems, a global community where the basic needs of all the Earth’s people are satisfied, and a world that will allow us to think of ourselves as civilized. This is entirely doable.” ~ Lester R. Brown
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“Access to computers and the Internet has become a basic need for education in our society.” ~ Kent Conrad
- “UNICEF is helping mothers realize their dreams for the future – a future in which the basic needs for a child’s survival: food, clean water and simple health care – are guaranteed.” ~ Jane Curtin
- “The religious urge in man is not a mere passing phase in the history of his spiritual development, but the ultimate source of all his ethical thought and all his concepts of morality; not the outcome of primitive credulity which a more “enlightened” age could outgrow, but the only answer to a real, basic need of man at all times and in all environments. In another word, it is an instinct.” ~ Muhammad Asad
- “The change in economic values created by the new markets for global public goods will reorient our global economy and under the right conditions can usher the satisfaction of basic needs of the present and of the future. This is what is needed right now.” ~ Graciela Chichilnisky
- “The crisis of physical hunger is essentially a crisis of faith. What or whom will you trust to meet your most basic needs? Will you trust the God who made human bodies, or will you seek your own way? (Deuteronomy 8:1-3)” ~ Charles R. Swindoll
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“The third basic need of a male in a relationship is an attractive woman; for a woman, honesty and openness.” ~ Myles Munroe
- “One of the basic needs of every human being is the need to be loved, to have our wishes and feelings taken seriously, to be validated as people who matter.” ~ Harold S. Kushner
- “The practice of thrift is not outdated. We must discipline ourselves to live within our incomes even if it means going without or making do. The wise person can distinguish…between basic needs and extravagant wants. Some find budgeting extremely painful, but I promise you, it is never fatal.” ~ Marvin J. Ashton
- “Well the real concept of basic needs if you cut it right down are simply the physical needs that are unavoidable for all of us. So to have enough calories to keep our bodies going. Have shelter from extreme elements. To have water that is safe to drink, So I think that’s the core of it.” ~ Peter Singer
- “When people appear to be something other than good and decent, it is only because they are reacting to stress, pain, or the deprivation of basic human needs such as security, love, and self-esteem.” ~ Abraham Maslow
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“There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex and revenge.” ~ Banksy
- “I want to stress again that human rights are not peripheral to the foreign policy of the United States. Our pursuit of human rights is part of a broad effort to use our great power and our tremendous influence in the service of creating a better world, a world in which human beings can live in peace, in freedom, and with their basic needs adequately met.” ~ Jimmy Carter
- “We demand a non-violent world where human security is the basis of our common global security. People have the right to live in a world where the basic needs of all peoples are addressed. No more military attacks. No more war.” ~ Shirin Ebadi
- “The first basic need of a male is sexual fulfillment; for a female, affection. The second most basic need of a male is recreational companionship; for a female, communication and conversation. The third basic need of a male in a relationship is an attractive woman; for a woman, honesty and openness. The fourth basic need of a male is domestic support; for a female, financial support. The fifth basic need of a male is admiration and respect; for a woman, family commitment.” ~ Myles Munroe
- “The basic need of the creator is independence. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be curbed, sacrificed or subordinated to any consideration whatsoever. It demands total independence in function and in motive.” ~ Ayn Rand
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“Through democracy we can address the basic needs of the people, involve them as participants in planning and restore the authority of the government.” ~ Benazir Bhutto
- “To all earth’s creatures God has given the broad earth, the springs, the rivers and the forests, giving the air to the birds, and the waters to those who live in water, giving abundantly to all the basic needs of life, not as a private possession, not restricted by law, not divided by boundaries, but as common to all, amply and in rich measure.” ~ Gregory of Nazianzus
- “”Who is secure in all his basic needs? Who has work, spiritual care, medical care, housing, food, occasional entertainment, free clothing, free burial, free everything? The answer might be nuns and monks, but the standard reply is ‘prisoners'”” ~ Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
- “I want to take human rights out of their box. I want to show the relevance of the universal principles of human rights to the basic needs of health, security, education and equality.” ~ Mary Robinson
- “I would say love is something everybody talks about, and the need for love is one of the most basic needs of man, namely the experience of union with another being – of becoming one with another being.” ~ Erich Fromm
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“Language comes into being, like consciousness, from the basic need, from the scantiest intercourse with other human.” ~ Karl Marx
- “We can begin ever so modestly. We can begin with a one week’s food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. I am speaking now of food to cover basic needs. . .I fear that so many feel that a long-term food supply is so far beyond their reach that they make no effort at all. . .Begin in a small way, … and gradually build toward a reasonable objective.” ~ Gordon B. Hinckley
- “I was in Athens for a football match when 9/11 went down, and it was quite spectacular – we went into this bar and tried to find out what happened, and the bartender said “it’s only the American and the Arabs. They’re not big football nations.” So the feeling was, what’s it got to do with us? Why are football games being cancelled in Europe? The intelligentsia in the West feel like they have to figure out the significance of it all, whereas people have other pressing concerns, related to basic needs.” ~ Irvine Welsh
- “If you’re worried about putting food on the table or putting a roof over your head, that stress is definitely will contribute to unhappiness, but once you have your basic needs met then incremental money.” ~ Tony Hsieh
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“When I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and it is all one.” ~ M. F. K. Fisher
- “There is a need for educators, young people, artists and other cultural workers to develop an educative politics in which people can address the historical, structural and ideological conditions at the core of the violence being waged by the corporate and repressive state and to make clear that government under the dictatorship of market sovereignty and power is no longer responsive to the most basic needs of young people – or most people for that matter.” ~ Henry Giroux
- “Studies say great harm can be done to a person if the connection between mother and child isn´t there from the start. Love is a basic need/instinct, and people can get quite desperate and become destructive if they don´t have it.” ~ Anne Sewitsky
