Quotes About Poverty

We live in a very unequal society.

Land ownership in Guatemala is more unequal than anywhere else in Latin America. Roughly 90 percent of Guatemalan farms are too small to support a family. A tiny group of Guatemalans owns a third of the country's arable land; more than 300,000 landless peasants must scrounge a living as best they can.

I want kids to be able to escape failing schools that trap them. And it's an unequal trapping of children. The most affluent find a way to escape. They move to a great suburban district or send their kid to a private school. The people who are trapped in the worst schools that have been terrible often for half a century? Those are the poorest kids.

Parents, teachers, professors, economists, pundits, entrepreneurs, tinkerers and misfits all have to do a better job of unapologetically singing the praises of capitalism and free markets which unequivocally demonstrate the ability to pull people out of poverty and improve and lengthen their lives.

The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor.

No one should ever be forced to choose between food and education, or medicine and shelter when they don't have the resources. It's very unfair.

Economically, unfair trade will benefit nobody in the long run, as poorer countries will be bled totally dry and will become unable to produce anything.

I went into a church and simply said, 'Goodbye.' It is the terrible unfairness of life. How could God allow cancer, poverty, the sheer unfairness of so many lives? That is the question which finishes it for me.

We, as Canadians, have no hesitation lecturing the rest of the world on what they should be doing, how they shouldn't discriminate, and how they should treat the poor. That same discrimination - unfairness that exists in so many of these countries - has been practised for years in our own country.

Food is such a basic need, and it is unfathomable to me that people still do not have adequate access.

I wish I had a dollar for every pro-choicer who told me that abortion has to be accessible for poor women... as if being poor makes you an unfit mother.

I grew up with not a lot of money and I definitely shopped at Goodwill. But even in my most unfortunate state, I was really blessed compared to a lot of the rest of the world. I had a really great chance to follow my dreams and have them actually come true.

Unfortunately, in a recession, the people who suffer the most aren't the rich, but the wanna-be rich and the poor.

This is the first generation in all of recorded history that can do something about the scourge of poverty. We have the means to do it. We can banish hunger from the face of the earth.

The problem of abolishing want is not a problem in division, as the politicians so often aver; it is a problem of multiplication.

That which is inherently nonfinanceable is financed. That which is inherently financeable is not financed. And the illogic of poverty amidst eagerness and ability to produce plenty goes on.

If life really begins at forty, then all poor people die in their teens.

Poverty is a scourge and must be dealt with surge.

The fastest and cheapest way to eradicate poverty is not by giving food but by giving hope, love, and education.

If hunger could please God, millions hadn't starved to death.

A poor, who hates power, once become powerful, hates poor.

He who despises a poor man's wisdom has turned away great riches.

A golden spoon is useless when the soup bowl is empty.

To have an empty head is worse than to have an empty bank account.