Need

All I need is my brains, my eyes and my personality, for better or for worse.
~ William Albert Allard, The Photographic Essay (American Photographer Master Series, 1989).

A very small portion of the fruit of the earth suffices to supply a man's necessities. The main elements are, a little food to appease hunger, and some clothing to ward off the cold. These, as a general rule, the poor man obtains, and what more can the rich man consume?
~ William Arnot, from The Race for Riches, and Some of the Pits into which the Runners Fall (1851). Lecture III: Money Valued at More than Money's Worth

So long as we judge ourselves by human comparisons, there is plenty of room for self-satisfaction, and self-satisfaction kills faith, for faith is born of the sense of need.
~ William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 1 (1975).

Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.
~ William Henry (W.H.) Beveridge, Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942).

As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

[T]he concept of military necessity is seductively broad, and has a dangerous plasticity. Because they invariably have the visage of overriding importance, there is always a temptation to invoke security "necessities" to justify an encroachment upon civil liberties. For that reason, the military-security argument must be approached with a healthy skepticism: its very gravity counsels that courts be cautious when military necessity is invoked by the Government to justify a trespass on First Amendment rights.
~ William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (dissenting opinion), Brown v. Glines, 444 U.S. 348 (1980).

Yet abstinence in things we must profess
Which Nature framed for need, not for excess.
~ William Browne, of Tavistock, Britannia's Pastorals, Book I (1613). Song III

Thus first necessity invented stools,
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
And luxury th' accomplish'd Sofa last.
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book I. The Sofa

There is a continuing, mandatory need for heresy in its most profound sense; for freedom to choose and follow truth wherever it leads.
~ William Edelen

Quality also marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved.
~ William A. Foster

The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence. He's got to have some inner standards worth fighting for or there won't be any way to bring him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it. That's all there is to it.
~ (William) Clark Gable, quoted in Adela Rogers St. John, The Honeycomb.

Everybody needs one essential friend.
~ William Glasser, M.D.

Too many of us fail to fulfill our needs because we say no rather than yes, or perhaps later in life, yes when we should say no.
~ William Glasser, M.D.

We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.
~ William Glasser, M.D., Choice Theory (1998). Chapter 13

We have to have armies! We have to have military power! We have to have police forces, whether it's police in a great city or police in an international scale to keep those madmen from taking over the world and robbing the world of its liberties.
~ Billy Graham, (1965).

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
~ Bill Hoest

The sovereign source of melancholy is repletion. Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
~ William James, from The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897). Is Life Worth Living?

The world doesn't need any more hip. The world doesn't need more cool, more clever. The world needs Picassos, more Mozarts ... not more Milli Vanillis. Not more haircuts.
~ Billy Joel, Rolling Stone Magazine (1990).

What the world needs and what individuals need is a higher standard of living, a great realizing sense of the privilege and dignity of life, a higher and nobler conception of individuality.
~ William George Jordan, The Majesty of Calmness (1900). I: The Majesty of Calmness

A Militia in an arbitrary and tyrannical Government may possibly be of some Service to the governing Power; but we learn from Experience, that in a free Country it is of little use.
~ Sir William Keith, Collection of Papers and Other Tracts, 180 (1740).

A concept of necessary suffering, praise Allah,
is common to all civilizations.
~ William Morris Meredith, Jr., from Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems (1987). Partial Accounts: II. Convalescence

But in the end one also has to understand that the needs that religion has satisfied and philosophy is now supposed to satisfy are not immutable; they can be weakened and exterminated. Consider, for example, that Christian distress of mind that comes from sighing over ones inner depravity and care for ones salvation -- all concepts originating in nothing but errors of reason and deserving, not satisfaction, but obliteration.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human (1878).

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Merely through the constant need to ward off, one can become weak enough to be unable to defend oneself any longer.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

That which needs to be proved cannot be worth much.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols (1888). The Problem of Socrates

Plurality should not be posited without necessity. (Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.)
~ William of Ockham (Ockham's Razor), Scriptum in Librum Primum Sententiarum, Opera Theologica, I (c. 1320).

There is a vast difference in some instances between what we really need and that which we think we must have, and the realization of this truth will greatly lessen the seeming discomfort in doing without.
~ William M. Peck

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom; it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
~ William Pitt, the Younger, Speech on the India Bill, House of Commons, Hansard (18 November 1783).

Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty, is the thing that we stand in need of.
~ William Popple, English translation of A Letter Concerning Toleration (Epistola de Tolerantia; 1689). Preface

If you spend more time talking about what you used to do, or did do, or can't do ... you've reached that point in your life when skydiving is now a necessity.
~ Bill Purdin, Legend, Inc. (accessed May 2003). Quote Archives.

I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
~ William L. Safire, in The New York Times (1 June 1986). Class Cleavage

Necessity creates the law, it supersedes rules, and whatever is reasonable and just in such cases is likewise legal.
~ William Scott, 1st Baron Stowell, Judicial Opinion in the Case of the Gratitudine (1801).

And nature must obey necessity.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

He must needs go that the devil drives.
~ William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well

I am sworn brother, sweet,
To grim Necessity, and he and I
Will keep a league till death.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II

I must become a borrower of the night
For a dark hour or twain.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act III, scene i

[I]t is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself; it is needful that you frame the season of your own harvest.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing

The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

The world needs the best you can give it.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday, from The Real Billy Sunday: The Life and Work of Rev. William Ashley Sunday, D.D., The Baseball Evangelist (1914). XV: Some of Sunday's Sayings

We must be silent before we can listen.
We must listen before we can learn.
We must learn before we can prepare.
We must prepare before we can serve.
We must serve before we can lead.
~ William Arthur Ward

In every such case, it is necessary to make a compromise between measurably satisfying a present pressing need, and doing the subject fuller justice at the cost of more time.
~ William Dwight Whitney, Sanskrit Grammar (1879). Preface

One need not hope in order to undertake; nor succeed in order to persevere.
~ William I, Prince of Orange (aka William the Silent)

People need to raise their sights and get away from the idea that material needs are the ultimate in importance. People need proper food and shelter but they also need -- if they are to be healthy -- knowledge, hope, love, friendship, and many other things of a non-material nature. ... One of the reasons for moving toward unified world knowledge is so that we can better fulfill all our needs.
~ Roger J. Williams, Ph.D., D.Sc., Philosophical Library (1986). Rethinking Education: The Coming Age of Enlightenment

You know what we need to heal are the thought forms and the feelings that cause us to create war and mass destruction on this kind of a level, because ultimately if we are to survive as a species, we have to become a human race for whom the thought of war is unthinkable.
~ Marianne Williamson, CNN TV "Larry King Weekend" (14 October 2001).

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.
~ August Wilson, Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984).

[T]he argument of necessity is the patriot's defence, as well as the tyrant's plea.
~ James Wilson, Debate before the (Pennsylvania) Constitutional Convention (1787).

Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Bloodshed, miserable train!
Turns his necessity to glorious gain.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume I (1807). Character of the Happy Warrior