Quotes About Poverty

There's a lot to be said for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

I saw people get fired after their eviction. But when I found that if you get evicted, your chances of losing your job increase by 20 percent, that's when it really hit home for me.

Kids increase people's risk of eviction.

We live in a world in which we're seeing an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Most actors are not rich - they are very poor indeed. What keeps them going is that they just love the job.

When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs.

We didn't starve, but we didn't eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was.

There is no intrinsic worth in money but what is alterable with the times, and whether a guinea goes for twenty pounds or for a shilling, it is the labor of the poor and not the high and low value that is set on gold or silver, which all the comforts of life must arise from.

Ce n'est pas parce qu'on est pauvre qu'on est vertueux, et ce n'est pas parce qu'on est riche qu'on est égoïste.

You can't become a billionaire stepping over children sleeping on the street.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminded us: "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

We are living in a nation which worships wealth rather than caring for the poor. I don't think that is the nation we should be living in.

In 2007, the top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income, more than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. That is not the foundation of a democratic society. That is the foundation for an oligarchic society. The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks. Poverty increases.

when we talk about justice, we have to, in my view, understand that there is no justice when so few have so much and so many have so little.

Humanity is at a crossroads. We can continue down the current path of greed, consumerism, oligarchy, poverty, war, racism, and environmental degradation. Or we can lead the world in moving in a very different direction.

we are living in a time where a handful of people have wealth beyond comprehension.

If we truly intend to make America great, we will strive to be a nation that has eliminated poverty, homelessness, and diseases of despair, where hard work is rewarded with a living wage, and where those who are too old or too infirm to work are protected by a safety net that guarantees no American will be destitute. That's not a utopian vision or some foreign construct.

The bottom line is that everything is connected to everything. Our political task is nothing less than the transformation of our nation. Health care for all, absolutely. But in order to create a healthy society, we also need to end poverty and provide decent-paying jobs for all people. We need a strong educational system, a clean environment, and equal opportunity for everyone regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or nationality. These, in fact, are all health-related issues.

Maybe it's a radical idea, but I believe a job should lift workers out of poverty -- not keep them in it.

Our struggle is to end a system that evaluates "worth" as a measure of market profitability, a system in which we are asked to believe—based on salaries paid—that the star athlete who helps a billionaire team owner increase his bottom line is "worth" more than a thousand teachers who help children escape poverty.

Health care for all, absolutely. But to create a healthy society, we also need to end poverty and provide decent-paying jobs for all people. We need a strong educational system, a clean environment, and equal opportunity for everyone regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or nationality. These, in fact, are all health-related issues.

It is said that wealth cannot buy happiness. Perhaps that is true. But it is undeniably true that poverty can lead to despair

we never get around to discussing the reality that, after adjusting for inflation, the average worker in America is making $44 a week less today than she made fifty years ago.

There is no real freedom without economic justice.