Quotes About Poverty

Just speaking from growing up in the projects, it was hard for me to take dance classes or voice classes because I didn't have money. Or learn an instrument because I didn't have the money to buy one.

Those that have less money shouldn't have their voices squelched.

My books are very few, but then the world is before me - a library open to all - from which poverty of purse cannot exclude me - in which the meanest and most paltry volume is sure to furnish something to amuse, if not to instruct and improve.

We believe that business is good because it creates value. It is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange; it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.

There are these very poor communities on the outskirts of Cairo called Mokattam, where a lot of the garbage collectors live. I used to volunteer there, doing health and education work when I was younger and living in Egypt.

Nyasaland was the perfect country for a volunteer. It was friendly and destitute; it was small and out-of-the-way. It had all of Africa's problems - poverty, ignorance, disease.

I used to do volunteer work in poor areas of Cairo, and people would gather their money together to get a satellite dish. You'd see them huddling around and for the first time seeing issues being debated on TV that had never been talked about before. And that is the biggest promoter of democracy you could possibly have.

People who are disenfranchised politically and people who are poor often don't vote. They often don't elect politicians, so the politicians who are supporting them are really being very charitable, because they're not going to give them billions of dollars in campaign funds.

If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama.

In my district, California 14, we have about 4,000 families who are on food stamps, but some of my colleagues have thousands and thousands more. Yet, they somehow feel like crusaders, like heroes, when they vote to cut food stamps.

You have to start with slavery because those abuses have never been eradicated. You know, people are not living in slums because they voted to. You know, their children are not in jail because they wanted them to. You know, these are the results of a people who have been oppressed and suffer national oppression, you know.

Nobody voted to be poorer, and nobody voted leave on the basis that somebody with a gold-plated pension and inherited wealth would take their jobs away from them.

A Harris poll I've seen says only 12 percent of the electorate names taxes as one of the most important issues facing the nation. Voters put tax cuts dead last, behind education, Social Security, health care, Medicare and poverty.

I have a country-boy sense of humor. I come from a poor family, and I have no education. But I am Middle America, and what makes me laugh is what makes them laugh.

In Los Angeles, wealth and poverty are separated by the freeways. In New York, they're next to each other.

My dad was a civil servant before he retired, and my mum worked, too. We could not always get three meals in a day; sometimes we'd struggle.

If learners do not have a roof under which they can learn we are already setting them up for failure.

If you grow up poor, I'm not sure you ever shake that off.

We want to end poverty and protect our environment. But we think the most efficient way of achieving that is to change the way a generation of young people is educated. That's how you'll shift the world.

My father is a street sweeper, my mother works in a shop.

For whatever reason, in this country we have a very interesting relationship with poverty, where we think people in poverty are bad people.

There's a lot of kids that don't even have a chance to live a balanced lifestyle. Not have to worry about food or clothes or education, or being able to play sports.

If everyone wants to eat like people in Bangladesh, then we would have food coming out of everybody's ears.

I have that working class fear of having nothing. I've always got one eye on what's in the bank.