Quotes About Poverty

We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain make us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humour. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous...We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty...

After five years of a sad and disgruntled marriage BoyBoy took off. During the time they were together he was very much preoccupied with other women and not home much. He did whatever he could that he liked, and he liked womanizing best, drinking second, and abusing Eva third. When he left in November, Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three beets, and no idea of what or how to feel.

However, poverty—whether measured by infant mortality, life expectancy, access to medicine and regular employment or simple inability to purchase basic necessities—has increased steadily since the 1970s

Contrary to a widespread assumption that has crept back into Anglo-American political jargon, few derive pleasure from handouts: of clothes, shoes, food, rent support or children's school supplies. It is, quite simply, humiliating.

After Greece, Portugal, rural Spain, southern Italy, and the former Communist Länder of Germany, the UK in 2000 was the largest beneficiary of European Union structural funds—which is a way of saying that parts of Britain were among the most deprived regions of the EU.

From the late 19th century until the 1970s, the advanced societies of the West were all becoming less unequal. Thanks to progressive taxation, government subsidies for the poor, the provision of social services and guarantees against acute misfortune, modern democracies were shedding extremes of wealth and poverty.

The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike.

What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is.

The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is.

While Molly and Joseph Anning suffered materially that winter, with many days of weak soup and weaker fires, Mary barely noticed how little she was eating or the chilblains on her hands and feet. She was suffering inside.

All this display, while the working classes were pinched beyond bearing; it was not wise, or tasteful: it smacked of ostentatious wealth. The Europe from which Phryne had lately come was impoverished, even the nobility; and was keeping its head down, still shocked by the Russian revolution. It had become fashionable to make no display; understatement had become most stylish.

When you see a rich man's wife shaking her head over the thriftlessness of the poor because they do not save, pity the lady's ignorance; but do not irritate the poor by repeating her nonsense to them. —George Bernard Shaw The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

But he would only spend it on drink! You know what the working classes are!' 'Indeed, ma'am, and why should he not spend it on drink? Would you deprive the poor, whose lives are bad and miserable and comfortless enough, of the solace of a little relief from grinding poverty?

He hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Slaves today are cheaper than they have ever been. The cost of slaves has fallen to a historical low, as little as $10.

People with money spend it wisely, ghetto people spend it trying to be what they think rich people are

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." Simon's insight is often reduced to "In a world of abundance, the only scarcity is human attention." Our

He insisted that the poor in other nations, like those in his own, needed no government assistance. "Their greatest need is not more money, food, or even medicine; it is Christ," he said. "Give them the Gospel of love and grace first and they will clean themselves up, educate themselves, and better their economic conditions."31

Yes, some people are so impoverished all they have is money.

I also worry that my reporting will become this deluge of tragedy for people, who like myself, unable or uncertain of what to do, let it wash over them. Some African journalists call it poverty porn—stories or images of intense suffering designed solely for emotional impact, but often have the effect of shutting people down rather than helping them step up.

What would they find? A better life? Or the same dreary, grinding poverty that had motivated their immigration in the first place?

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

Whoever allows the world to become his biggest concern has nothing to do with Allah, and Allah will instil four qualities into his heart: anxiety which will never leave him, business which he will never be free from; poverty which he will never rid himself of, and hope which he will never fulfil. (Tabarani.) Additionally,

poverty which had celebrated a hundred thousand silver and golden jubilees.