Quotes About Poverty

It's all about money, not freedom. You think you're free? Try going somewhere without money.

Don't whine about your poverty and brainless labor. You can read, can't you? Get thee to a library and foment rebellion - in both inner and outer worlds.

Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through.

The general public had no love for either the banks or the railroads, which were controlled by fat cats in the North and the East who cared not at all for the troubles of the poor workingman. All Jesse James was doing was fighting back for all the people who had no fight left in them. He became the nation's most revered outlaw.

It's hard to do it because you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period.

They advertise on the radio for food stamps!

What we discovered was that the only thing wrong with poor people is they don't have any money, which happens to be a curable condition.

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

Hearing the statistic that one in four children in Scotland suffer from poverty just made me think that if there is even a tiny thing I could do that would help then it was totally worthwhile.

We need to recognise that what really matters isn't buying more and more consumer goods, but family, friends, and knowing that we are doing something worthwhile with our lives. Helping to reduce the appalling consequences of world poverty should be part of that reassessment.

I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worthy nor such a one as that he should grant this to me, since I know most surely that poverty and affliction become me better than delights and riches.

If poverty were a man, I would have slain him.

It's risky to show poor Americans. People see it as a downer. But I really wanted to make a tightly wound piece of storytelling that also happened to explode the myth of American affluence.

I once treated a 24-year-old construction worker who had scraped his leg but could not afford to take off work. By the time I saw him, the small wound that developed had become a severe infection. He remained in the hospital for days and eventually had to have his lower leg amputated.

With all the other -isms that we deal with, that sort of nameless -ism that we have in too many of our hearts against the poor in this country is what wounds us most broadly.

Have you read 'The Grapes of Wrath?' That was my family. My dad was a sharecropper in western Oklahoma. When the dust storms came and everything got wiped out, they came to California. The guys with the mattresses on the tops of their cars in the movie? That was the way it was.

Soviet moviegoers gazed enviously on the jalopy that took the Joads from Oklahoma to California. The message Russians took from 'The Grapes of Wrath': even the poorest capitalists have cars!

Now, instead of loading up your jalopy and heading for California, you take a second, badly paid job; 'The Grapes of Wrath' has turned into 'Nickel and Dimed.'

We did not had enough facilities in the village. My family was also not well off. There was no mat, no gym; we used to wrestle in the mud. It was very different from the national camps where I trained before the Commonwealth Games.

Wrestling is rooted in the Indian soil, yet there isn't enough scope for kids who come from poorer families, but have the talent, to join the sport professionally.

There never yet was, and never will be, a nation permanently great, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched and miserable families.

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

Not only does the proportion of the poor increase with the growth of the city, but their condition becomes more wretched.

To overcome poverty and the flaws of the economic crisis in our society, we need to envision our social life. We have to free our mind, imagine what has never happened before and write social fiction. We need to imagine things to make them happen. If you don't imagine, it will never happen.