Indigence meaning

Noun: indigence

Pronunciation: (in-di-jun(t)s)

Indigence meaning: A state of extreme poverty or destitution.

Synonyms: need, penury, pauperism, destitution, impoverished

Derived forms: indigences

Quotations: James Madison – Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.

Aristotle – Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The free intellect copies human life, but it considers this life to be something good and seems to be quite satisfied with it. That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts.

Samuel Richardson – For love must be a very foolish thing to look back upon, when it has brought persons born to affluence into indigence, and laid a generous mind under obligation and dependence.

James Madison – Measures should be enacted which, without violating the rights of property, would reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.

Sample sentences:

1. Jesting is often only indigence of intellect.
2. Government was founded on the working premise of being primarily an asylum for ineptitude and indigence.
3. There is no capital more useful than intellect and wisdom, and there is no indigence more injurious than ignorance and unawareness.
4.  Oh, what a valiant faculty is hope that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its master’s indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
5. What they impecunious expatriates like, of course, is not only low prices and sunshine but a place where indigence looks like modest affluence by contrasting with the surrounding poverty, where poverty can be worn with dignity, as it is not noticeable or embarrassing.
6. Poverty has, in large cities, very different appearances. It is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance. It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for tomorrow.
7. Plenty and indigence depend upon the opinion everyone has of them; and riches, no more than glory or health, have no more beauty or pleasure than their possessor is pleased to lend them.
8. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.
9. Their indigence has appalled us all.
10. They have enjoyed all our property and reduced us to indigence.