Quotes About Poverty

My mom always brought home a present once a week for all of us. We never felt like we ever needed anything. We never felt poor. So I never felt I had to go out and do something wrong to get money.

'Slumdog Millionaire' has truly opened newer avenues for India.

It's extremely depressing that a country of this magnitude, and where it thinks it lies in itself, can allow so many foodbanks to be operating in this country.

You know I have loved him always. But we are very poor. Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden...

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing.

For what are called criminals nowadays are not criminals at all.  Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime.  That indeed is the reason why our criminals are, as a class, so absolutely uninteresting from any psychological point of view.  They are not marvellous Macbeths and terrible Vautrins.  They are merely what ordinary, respectable, commonplace people would be if they had not got enough to eat. 

Poor? What does that matter? When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.

To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays. I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial. Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich.

The best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so.

When poverty creeps in at the door, love flies in through the window.

Starvation, and not sin, is the parent of modern crime'.

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

So the swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets...

Real misfortune is not just a matter of being hungry and thirsty; it is a matter of knowing that there are people who want you to be hungry and thirsty

I'm] as broke as the ten commandments.

Work, the hobby of the philosopher and the poor man's friend.

Katrina opened a window that allowed us to peer into the real America, but as soon as the disruptive event was over, that window closed, and the country's consciousness went back to its usual state of ignoring the fact that black people, especially low-income black people, are daily denied democracy and equality in this country.

I say! he said. Are you broke? Nelly laughed. Am I? If dollars were doughnuts, I wouldn't even have the hole in the middle.

I wonder the food didn't turn to ashes in our mouths! Eggs! Muffins! Sardines! All wrung from the bleeding lips of the starving poor! Oh, I say! What a beastly idea!... Jeeves came in to clear away, and found me sitting among the ruins. It was all very well for Comrade Butt to knock the food, but he had pretty well finished the ham; and if you had shoved the remainder of the jam into the bleeding lips of the starving poor it would hardly have made them sticky.

We are living now in what is known as the Welfare State, which means – broadly – that everybody is completely destitute.

What it all boils down to, if you follow me, is that certain blokes — me, for example — have got much too much of the ready, while certain other blokes — the martyred proletariat, for instance — haven't got enough. This makes it fairly foul for the m.p., if you see what I mean.

He who has nothing—it has been said many times—has nothing to lose but his chains.