"There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use"
About this Quote
The provocation here is how little Mother Teresa actually concedes to righteous anger. She grants the popular moral calculus - wealth must have a cause, and work is the most comforting one - then pivots to a stricter target: not inequality itself, but waste. It is a subtle rhetorical narrowing. By treating affluence as potentially earned, she dodges the political argument about systems and redistribution and relocates the ethical fight to something almost domestic: what gets tossed, what could be saved, what could be shared.
That move carries a double intent. Publicly, it keeps her message legible to donors and the comfortable classes whose support sustained her work: you can keep your self-respect and still be called to account. Privately, it sharpens the indictment. Waste is a sin that even the privileged can recognize without feeling accused for simply having more. It reframes guilt as a matter of daily habits rather than abstract economics.
The subtext is also profoundly Catholic: anger is permissible when it defends human dignity, but it must be disciplined, tethered to concrete acts of mercy. Waste becomes the moral pressure point because it exposes surplus as a choice. Someone throwing away usable goods isn’t just rich; they are refusing relationship with the poor.
Context matters: this is the voice of a leader whose authority came less from policy than from proximity to extreme deprivation. In that world, "waste" isn’t an aesthetic offense; it is the visible edge where comfort meets neglect, and where small decisions translate into whether someone eats, is clothed, or is seen.
That move carries a double intent. Publicly, it keeps her message legible to donors and the comfortable classes whose support sustained her work: you can keep your self-respect and still be called to account. Privately, it sharpens the indictment. Waste is a sin that even the privileged can recognize without feeling accused for simply having more. It reframes guilt as a matter of daily habits rather than abstract economics.
The subtext is also profoundly Catholic: anger is permissible when it defends human dignity, but it must be disciplined, tethered to concrete acts of mercy. Waste becomes the moral pressure point because it exposes surplus as a choice. Someone throwing away usable goods isn’t just rich; they are refusing relationship with the poor.
Context matters: this is the voice of a leader whose authority came less from policy than from proximity to extreme deprivation. In that world, "waste" isn’t an aesthetic offense; it is the visible edge where comfort meets neglect, and where small decisions translate into whether someone eats, is clothed, or is seen.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wealth |
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