What does this phrase about economics mean [Lionel Robbins]? Lionel Robbins once said, "Economics is the study of scarce resources which have alternative uses."

Would someone mind explaining what he meant by this? 
I, as a naive 14 yr. old, think about this economics quote as meaning 'a person studying how to use scarce resources in any context and those resources have many uses'. e.g. It is cold outside and I don't have enough money to buy gloves, but I do have an extra pair of socks, thus I use socks as gloves. 


If you cannot understand this, please let me know and I will clear it up!
 Thanks for your time -
To me, the quote seems to be about what economics is, and, more subtly, what it isn't. Robbins claims economics is about scarce resources that people can use for multiple things. The implication, and you will find this in undergraduate economics textbooks, is that economics is concerned with efficiency. Economists are simply looking for ways to make the most out of scarce resources. An outflow of this focus on efficiency is the paradigm of utility or profit optimization under constraints.

Perhaps more interesting is the subtle claim of what economics is not about: the distribution of resources. This does not seem particularly radical now, but it was much more so at the time. Keynes and Marx still dominated the political discourse in the early 20th century, and both were very much concerned with the distribution of resources. By focusing on efficiency rather than distribution, Robbins puts himself firmly in the neoliberal paradigm.