Quotes About Poverty

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify: but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself.

If the poor man cannot always get meat, the rich man cannot always digest it.

Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are; but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation', a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.

No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses.

He hath eaten me out of house and home.

No man is rich whose expenditure exceeds his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.

We are largely the playthings of our fears. To one, fear of the dark; to another, of physical pain; to a third, of public ridicule; to a fourth, of poverty; to a fifth, of loneliness ... for all of us, our particular creature waits in ambush.

If you ask the hungry man how much is two and two, he replies four loaves.

Avarice is as destitute of what it has as poverty is of what it has not.

Joy has nothing to do with material things, or with a man's outward circumstance ... a man living in the lap of luxury can be wretched, and a man in the depths of poverty can overflow with joy.

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed.

Avarice hoards itself poor; charity gives itself rich.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

It's more important to try to do something for the crores of poor people of my country.

Being broke and being in the street does not mean that you're keeping it real. I think that everybody that lives in a non-wealthy neighbourhood spends their time and energy trying to do everything they can to better their living standards. I'm no different.

I remember as a little boy I ate one meal a day and sometimes slept in the street. I will never forget that and it inspires me to fight hard, stay strong and remember all the people of my country, trying to achieve better for themselves.

If I wrote in Jacob Riis' time, I'd be writing about teeming slums in our cities and kids dying of tuberculosis or outhouses in Philadelphia or kids losing their toes because they were living in homes without heat. He took on a battle in 'The Battle with the Slums' - and we won.

I had tuberculosis in my mid-20s. I didn't have much work, was living in a damp London basement in a sleeping bag, and ate only every other day. I looked rough and felt very run down.

Being a single mom, I fought my way through living in poverty, feeling like I wasn't ever enough, feeling an annoying tug that we as a family possibly weren't complete.

My family were very poor. I am one of nine siblings: two girls and seven boys. Only my brother and I play in Europe, and then three more work in Europe, and another plays in Tunisia. This family is a footballing family, but our lives have not always been good.

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 brings one blessing in Turkey - the poor man is of necessity a monogamist.