
“Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.”
Poem Song for Dov Shamir in: Dannie Abse (1963), Dannie Abse, p. 8
“Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.”
Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen
Context: Any mundane activity can become meditative. Digging a hole in the garden, planting new roses in the garden — you can do it with such tremendous love and compassion, you can do it with the hands of a buddha. There is no contradiction … I say unto you, your every act should be a ceremony. If you can bring your consciousness, your awareness, your intelligence to the act, if you can be spontaneous, then there is no need for any other religion: life itself will be the religion.
“He plants trees to benefit another generation.”
Serit arbores, quae alteri saeclo prosint
Caecilius Statius, Synephebi, as quoted by Cicero in De Senectute, VII.
Misattributed
2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero
“Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.”
"The Art of Fiction" - interview by Robert Faggen, The Paris Review No. 130 (Spring 1994) <!-- p. 92 -->
Context: I'm for mystery, not interpretive answers. … The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.
"Address in Berkeley at the University of California (109)" (23 March 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1963