Quotes About Poverty

Under civilization poverty is born of superabundance itself.

Although the reward of poverty, which is the kingdom of heaven, be doubtless due unto the poor, yet we command you to give daily unto the almoner the tenth of your bread for distribution, a thing which the Christian religion assuredly recommends as regards the poor.

Life for the overwhelming majority of people who haven't been blessed to live in a free society has been, as Hobbes put it, "poor, nasty, brutish, and short."8

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavours, with his utmost care, to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.

The story of his youth was a series of bitternesses, as is the case with almost all distinguished men. Poverty sits by their cradle, and keeps watch over them till they have grown up; and this lean nurse remains their true companion through life.

Scarcity causes hardship, but affluence creates poverty.

...no circumstances, however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for the admission of that last and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the Pun.

Some for renown on scraps of learning dote, And think they grow immortal as they quote. To patch-work learned quotations are allied; Both strive to make our poverty our pride.

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

When you read Marx (or Jesus) this way, you come to see that real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.

Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.

Painless poverty is better than embittered wealth.

I request America to look into our hearts and see that the great majority of us are not terrorists, but good and simple people. Our land is stricken with poverty because we are without education. - Syed Abbas

Close examination of the evidence shows that the poor were being included in private education, and only those who did not want to go to school were missing out. There was no need for public school except as a tool to undermine the church's influence in education.

Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.

The principle suffering of the poor is shame and disgrace. It is a toxic shame -- a global sense of failure of the whole self. This shame can seep so deep down... To this end, one hopes (against all human inclination) to model not the "one false move" God but the "no matter whatness" of God. You seek to imitate the kind of God you believe in, where disappointment is, well, Greek to Him. You strive to live the black spiritual that says, "God looks beyond our fault and sees our need.

The poor are pawns in a political-economic system contrived to keep those in power powerful and rich. Although the stake most people have in the going scheme is tiny, it's been enough to help isolate the majority of Russians from one another and keep them from acting in their common interests by joining forces against the country's top-down corruption.

An important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money.

Why, look at me. I've worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

Why, look at me. I've worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

Rich feeds poor or disadvantaged only for own publicity.

Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.

Literature is the product of life. Life is its soil. And the richness or poverty of the soil determines whether a work of literature is vigorous or feeble. A great tree will not grow from barren land; only rich soil and clear water will enable it to flourish.