Quotes About Poverty

With fingers weary and worn,With eyelids heavy and red,A woman sat in unwomanly ragsPlying her needle and thread—Stitch! stitch! stitch!In poverty, hunger, and dirt.

She sang the Song of the Shirt.

Chuang Tzu was invited to the court to serve as a minister, an invitation he declined with a typical story: An ox is selected for a festival and fattened up for several years, living the life of wealth and indulgence—until the day he is led away for sacrifice. At that reckoning what would he give to return to the simple life, where there was poverty but also freedom? In

Five million people die unnecessarily each year because of illness related to lack of potable water. Half of them are children under the age of five. To bring it home, think about this: one child dies from lack of clean water every twelve seconds.

To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.

When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government

Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched,than would have been the lot of either in a natural state.

out the matters contained in those books, together with the assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue, in n pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

Oppression is often the consequence, but seldom or never the means of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.

Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous consciousness of honour. It is not the produce of riches only, but of the hard earnings of labour and poverty. It is drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery. Not a beggar passes, or perishes in the streets, whose mite is not in that mass.

Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and though avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.

the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it.

It has set up a religion of pomp and revenue, in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

Despotic government supports itself by abject civilization, in which debasement of the human mind, and wretchedness in the mass of the people, are the chief criterions. Such governments consider man merely as an animal; that the exercise of intellectual faculty is not his privilege; that he has nothing do with laws but to obey them, and they politically depend more upon breaking the spirit of the people by poverty, than they fear enraging it by desperation. -Agrarian Justice

While this number puts the economic fragility of America's families in a new light, the shocking statistic is that nine out of every ten black Americans will encounter poverty during their working adult years.

The Bible is the Book of Emancipation of Man. The emancipation of man means his delivery from sorrow and sickness, from poverty, struggle and uncertainty, from ignorance and limitation, and finally from death itself.

The generosity of the poor, Sera marveled to herself. It puts us middle-class people to shame. They should hate our guts, really. Instead, they treat us like royalty. The thought of how she herself treated Bhima—not allowing her to sit on the furniture, having her eat with separate utensils—filled her with guilt. Yet she knew that if she tried to change any of these rituals, Feroz would have a fit.

If she has truly been brought so low that she has to second-guess the simple act of sharing a fruit with a woman even more destitute than she, then why not relinquish all claims to human society? She may as well join the pack of stray dogs that lives just outside the slum, who snarl and wrestle each other over a bone.

She feels a sudden, indiscriminate anger, although she's unsure of its target - the Gods who toy with women like her and Parvati for their own amusement, this cruel city that begets so many poor people that it cannot take care of them, or at her own obtuseness.

We are lovers of beauty without extravagance, and lovers of wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome.

One time, while waiting in a Kmart checkout line, five-year-old Shane had seen some guy steal a waffle iron from a woman's cart while she wasn't looking. His mind had quietly spiraled over it. What if waffles were all she had to feed her thirteen badass kids because their dad squandered her modest bank-teller salary on fantasy-football bets and scratch cards? What if her life depended on that waffle iron? He'd obsessed about it for days.

It is bad enough when rich Christians shoe little concern for the poor, but when they moan about their lot, they show contempt not only for the poor but also for the generosity of God.

She may not have enough money to visit the canteen, but they look at her as though she is a hero.