I think all people would like to feel that they’re a necessary part of life. That they’re necessary in the world, and that life would be poorer if they weren’t in it. When you accomplish something, when you write good poetry, then I think you feel that the world would be slightly different if you weren’t in it. And that, I think, is part of what being needed is about.
—Kenneth Koch
When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.
—Lord Falkland
Nothing has more strength than dire necessity.
—Euripides
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
—Dorothy Parker
When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
—William Wrigley Jr.
I don’t owe people anything, and I don’t have to talk to them any more than I feel I need to.
—Ned Vizzini in It’s Kind of a Funny Story
Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.
—Frank Lloyd Wright
He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.
—Charles Bukowski
It may be that the deep necessity of art is the examination of self-deception.
—Robert Motherwell
Invention is the mother of necessity.
—Thorstein Veblen
As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.
—Ernest Hemingway
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
—Albert Einstein
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
—Edward Abbey
Not even the gods fight against necessity.
—Simonides
Necessity has no law.
—William Langland