The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase." - Meaning and context.">
Help for the Starving, Pt. III (January 1892)

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.

— Leo Tolstoy

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase." in the context of "Help for the Starving, Pt. III (January 1892)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Leo Tolstoy" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Leo Tolstoy

About Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.