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For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

George Orwell#49

PsychologyPovertyEconomicsFutureHungerStressWorry

About this quote

What does it mean?
Poverty reduces worry because it removes future concerns, though it brings boredom and hunger.
In plain terms
Having less money can mean fewer worries about what lies ahead.
What can you take from it?
Less wealth can simplify concerns, but brings other hardships.

Where it applies

  • living in poverty
  • financial stress
  • economic downturn

Putting it to work

  • budgeting tightly
  • seeking community support

Questions to consider

  • Does reduced financial anxiety justify the pains of poverty?
  • How does the loss of future planning affect decision‑making?

Another view

Poverty also brings severe hardships that can outweigh any reduction in worry.

More from George Orwell

  1. The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people - people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or…

    Permalink to quote #48
  2. Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one's blood h…

    Permalink to quote #50
  3. Poverty is what I'm writing about.

    Permalink to quote #47

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