poverty quotes

I’d go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon those who borrow and lend. Money was not borrowed by campesinos, assembly plant workers, or slum-dwellers. The mass of the population gained little from borrowing, indeed often suffered grievously from its effects.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

It’s difficult to believe that people are still starving in this country because food isn’t available.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

Poverty breeds despair. We know this. Despair breeds violence. We know this. In turbulent times, isn’t it cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them later?

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

As a kid, I got three meals a day. Oatmeal, miss-a-meal and no meal.

Yes, we’ve still got more work to do. More work to do for every American still in need of a good job or a raise, paid leave or a decent retirement; for every child who needs a sturdier ladder out of poverty or a world-class education; for everyone who has not yet felt the progress of these past seven and a half years.

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

If you’re totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I’m not ashamed of anything.

These days there is a lot of poverty in the world, and that’s a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone. We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.

Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world’s poorest people.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

Poverty wants some, luxury many, and avarice all things.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

You lose your individuality a huge amount when you have no money, and I certainly had that experience.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn’t trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

The poorest people are the sweetest people.

There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

An important priority for me is a business must get their own house in order. Be or become an agent of positive change in your own enterprise and adopt responsible practices to eliminate the risks that often lie at the root of inequality and poverty.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Satan is wiser now than before, and tempts by making rich instead of poor.

When you look at how much we spend on social programs in our country, it separates us from a lot of countries. In our country, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. But all of that comes at a cost.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.