QuoteProject
I have become convinced that the more wealth a country accumulates, the more isolated and lonely its people become. The loneliest are usually the children and the elderly. Children learn what they live, and isolation in the ‘village’ is one of the most destructive messages we daily write on the tablets of their hearts.
Wess Stafford
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Wealth can lead to social isolation and loneliness, particularly affecting children and the elderly.

Wess Stafford's quote reflects a critical view of wealth accumulation and its societal impact, suggesting that as a nation becomes wealthier, its inhabitants may experience greater loneliness and isolation. This tendency threatens the well-being of vulnerable populations, such as children and the elderly, who absorb the harmful lessons of isolation from their communities, highlighting the importance of connection and the detrimental effects of materialism on social bonds.

Themes

WealthIsolationLonelinessChildrenElderlyCommunityRelationships

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about the importance of community in education, one might reference this quote to emphasize the social lessons children learn from their environments.

More from Wess Stafford

If God places a child before you, and you are too busy to wield either a positive or negative influence...you just did the later! You communicated that the child doesn't matter and isn't important.
Wess StaffordRead

Similar quotes

There's not some idea I'm going to create a work that's going to change everybody's consciousness.
Eckhart TolleRead
Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretence to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.
George BerkeleyRead
Anybody who tells a very big lie is paid attention to. If you say, 'Shakespeare could not write. He was illiterate,' everybody says, 'Well, what do you know that we don't?' That's what Trump does all the time.
Carl ReinerRead
I have assured His Majesty that our war is against evil, not against Islam. There are thousands of Muslims who proudly call themselves Americans, and they know what I know - that the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion. The exact opposite of the teachings of the al Qaeda organization, which is based upon evil and hate and destruction.
George W. BushRead
There was never a good war, or a bad peace.
Benjamin FranklinRead
What has been forgotten is never something purely individual. Everything forgotten mingles with what has been forgotten of the prehistoric world, forms countless, uncertain, changing compounds, yielding a constant flow of new, strange products.
Walter BenjaminRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.