Quotes About Poverty

Today, Wilberforce University welcomes many of America's poorest and most underserved populations and transforms their educational dreams into realities.

We who are sometimes obsessed with social conscience can no longer imagine a world without it, or a society that regards the suffering of the poor and others as the "will of God.

The income of the world's 500 richest people exceeds the cumulative income of the world's 416 million poorest people. —UNITED NATIONS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Lorsque tu veux savoir si tu es dans un endroit riche ou pauvre, tu regardes les poubelles. Si tu vois ni ordures ni poubelles, c'est très riche. Si tu vois des poubelles et pas d'ordures, c'est riche. Si tu vois des ordures à côté des poubelles, c'est ni riche ni pauvre: c'est touristique. Si tu vois les ordures sans les poubelles, c'est pauvre. Et si les gens habitent dans les ordures, c'est très très pauvre.

Monsieur Ibrahim: To find out if a country is rich or poor, look at the bins. If there are bins and no rubbish, it's rich. If there's rubbish by the bins, it's neither rich nor poor... it's touristy. And if there's rubbish but no bins, then it's poor.

What I have told you is not completely true. You should beware, for often in this story, my words will be spoken out of bitterness, out of hate. The scream of the poor is not always just; but if you do not listen to it, then you will never understand justice.

From the poorest places came the richest music—it had always been that way.

love is a poverty you couldn't sell

The gap in quality between the diet of the poorest and that of the richest is wide and widening. The poorest families in America may not look hungry in the way that Victorian orphans looked hungry, but they eat fewer dark green vegetables, fewer whole grains, and fewer nuts.

Until the twentieth century, the threat of famine was a universal aspect of human existence across the world. Harvests failed; populations starved; for anyone but the wealthy, food wasn't to be relied on. Even in rich countries such as Britain and France, ordinary people lived with the daily spectre of going to sleep hungry and spent as much as half their income on basic staples such as grain and bread.

The poor man with industry is happier than the rich man in idleness.

Poverty is never by the grace of God in the estimation of a New-Englander. It comes to him by post from the other direction.

The two poorest men in the world are buckled together at the opposite sides of the circle. The man who has so much money that he does not know what to do with it and the man who has no money at all touch each other, as you will find; and one is about as poor as the other.

The most powerful tool to lift families out of extreme poverty is to grant micro-loans to women.

I don't have a dime left. I am dependent on my friends for food and a small old-age pension.

I knew what it was like to be poor, and that once you had become rich, anything was better than being poor again.

There's something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches.

Feeding the starving poor only increases their number.

Dread of returning to Iraq equals the direst poverty, and that's how he feels right now, poor , like a shabby homeless kid suddenly thrust into the company of millionaires. Mortal fear is the ghetto of the human soul, to be free of it something like the psychic equivalent of inheriting a hundred million dollars. This is what he truly envies of these people, the luxury of terror as a talking point, and at this moment he feels so sorry for himself that he could break right down and cry.

I know that man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor one for the alms of my guilt.

He saw the world in which black people always suffered and he didn't like it. He saw a world in which human beings suffered so needlessly from Antipodes to Equator, and he didn't like it either. He saw our people drowning in poverty, in famine, drought, in divisiveness and the blood of war. He saw our people always preyed upon by other powers, manipulated by the Western world, our history and achievements rigged out of existence.

The only power poor people have is their hunger.

The school-children were in their uniforms. A cock crowed repeatedly. Mum got her tray together. I was ready for school. Mum went down the street, swaying, moving a little sleepily, with one more burden added to her life. She was merely a detail in the poverty of our area.

It was not the goal that really concerned us, the journey was the thing. Who ever reaches any goal? From what journey can we return? We know of the poverty about us, of the work and worry, but we know of a degree of freedom, of a stunted beauty. We have warm open days and sunshine in Carolina. Much is denied us. But we have, we have. And an attitude is more powerful than any circumstance.