Michael Palmer

“Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have 'come down in the world' are to be pitied above all others.
The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start,
and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind.”
― George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”
― George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950