Quotes About Poverty

Sometimes we used to eat once a day... chicken backs. You could buy four chicken backs for a quarter.

I know what it's like to dig in the couches to find a quarter or two to pull together so you can get a gallon of gas and your grandfather can go to work. That is not something defined by whether you're a Democrat or Republican.

When I first got to the city, I had no money. I was living in Queens amongst boxes and lived in Harlem and didn't have a couch.

I grew up in the projects in Queens, and we were really poor.

One day mom sat down and says, 'I'm moving my children to Queens. There was this quiet in the room and then everyone burst out laughing. Moving to Queens for us was like moving to Mars. It was like breaking out of poverty, the ultimate in luxury.

We need to ask questions about how we're going to give low-income kids who come from a broken home access to a loving home.

I was deeply concerned then, and have become more concerned since, that unless we can deal with the questions of development and the questions of poverty, there's no way that we're going to have a peaceful world for our children.

India needs fresh thinking and quick decision-making to get out of the stifling bind of its galloping population and deadly poverty.

There are no quick fixes to Indigenous poverty and social disaster.

Being poor gets you thinking quicker.

Actually if you were to buy a bag of dried lentils it would cost you a couple of quid. Some people don't have that to spend in the first place. And not everyone wants to eat lentils.

Things were so bad we ate rabbits that neighbours had run over and gave to us because they knew we were broke.

Energetic action on debt would make a radical difference to the prospects of many of the poorest countries in the world, at no practical cost to creditor countries.

I have lived poverty. I didn't choose it. No one would choose humiliation, pain, and rage.

I came from a poor family. My father was from Glasgow, Scotland; my mother's brothers were brakemen on the railroad. We didn't have anything but mush for breakfast.

There were evictions that I saw that I know I'll never forget. In one case, the sheriff and the movers came up on a house full of children. The mom had passed away, and the children had just gone on living there. And the sheriff executed the eviction order - moved the kids' stuff out on the street on a cold, rainy day.

When you are already eating as cheaply and meagerly as possible, any raise in cost can quickly plunge you and your family into hunger.

No woman who works full time and plays by the rules should have to raise her family in poverty.

I was raised really poor and so was my husband.

I used to work for the World Health Organisation in poor countries all over the world - Bangladesh, Korea, the Philippines and India. You learn a whole range of things about how other people are living and try to connect with them to gain an understanding of where they're coming from.

Climate change pries further apart the haves and have-nots.

South Tel Aviv has turned into the garbage can of the country.

When you go to places like Gary and Detroit, you see the economic problem in this country and who it's really affecting.

My father was really good with math. It's a funny thing, I don't remember my father or my mother being so mechanical-minded. My father always wanted to be a doctor, but he came from a really poor family in Georgia, and there was no way he was going to be a doctor.