Zoroaster — "Do not hold grain waiting for higher prices when people are hungry."
Do not hold grain waiting for higher prices when people are hungry.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Zoroaster
"Always meet petulance with gentleness and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even an elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness."
"Oh Mazda, I shall reveal your message to the seekers of knowledge. And shall tell them that the destiny of a false doer is pain. And the destiny of a righteous doer is happiness."
"The wise man chooses good. The very wise man chooses good and then immediately finds a comfortable rock to sit on."
"Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness."
"That which is good for all and any one, For whomsoever- that is good for me. . . What I hold good for self, I should for all. Only Law Universal is true law."
About Zoroaster (c. 1500-1000 BCE (debated))
Iranian prophet who founded Zoroastrianism, the first major religion of cosmic dualism between good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Angra Mainyu). Closely associated with The Buddha (near-contemporary Eastern moral-cosmological revolutionary). For an intellectual contrast, see Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher of 'beyond good and evil' — Nietzsche appropriated Zarathustra's name for Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) precisely to invert the original's moral cosmology — the historical Zoroaster founded the good-versus-evil framework Nietzsche's character announces the end of.
Details
From the Gathas or other Avestan texts, an ethical injunction.
Date: c. 6th century BC
Food & DrinkVerification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Don't hoard essential food to drive up prices while people suffer from hunger. Profiting from scarcity by withholding supply when communities are desperate is morally wrong. The saying condemns using market leverage over necessities to exploit the vulnerable, and urges those with surplus to release it so the needy can eat, even if it means accepting a lower return instead of maximum gain.
Relevance to Zoroaster
Zoroaster taught that righteousness (asha) required active good works, honest labor, and generosity toward the poor, while greed and deception served the lie (druj). He addressed a pastoral-agrarian society where grain stores meant survival. Condemning hoarders aligns with his ethic of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, and his insistence that wealth be earned fairly and shared, making the farmer-steward, not the speculator, the moral ideal.
The era
In the ancient Iranian world of roughly the second millennium BCE, settled farmers and herders lived beside raiding nomads, and harvests were fragile. Famine followed drought or conflict, and those controlling granaries held life-and-death power over neighbors. No coinage or regulated markets existed; exchange ran on barter, reciprocity, and tribal obligation. Against this backdrop, priests and chieftains who withheld stored grain to extract livestock or labor were a real threat Zoroaster's ethics directly confronted.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].