Quotes About Poverty

The reason why I buy into the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party is because there are over 2,000 verses of Scripture that deal with responding to the needs of the poor.

When the TV version of Annie came on, I was drawn to it. It was the struggle of this poor kid in this environment and how her life changed. It immediately resonated.

There are millions of homeless children in the world—which proved again that kids were a low-value commodity, didn't it? I mean, there are very few homeless Bentleys in the world.

By the close of 1861, eight arsenals and four depots had been supplied with materials and machinery, so as to be efficient in producing the various munitions and equipments, the want of which had caused early embarrassment. Thus a good deal had been done to produce the needed material of war, and to refute the croakers who found in our poverty application for the maxim, Ex nihilo nihil fit.

Author O. Henry coins the term "Banana Republic" for countries with one main product like bananas, ruled by a small rich military-elite of landowners at the tip and a vast impoverished populace crushed beneath like an iceberg.

No American must be allowed to die because he cannot afford to live.

Whatever the cause, the United States is privately rich but socially poor. It caters to the pursuit of wealth but pays scant attention to those left behind. And though American culture emphasizes individualism and the pursuit of individual wealth perhaps more than any other society, that focus does not lead to greater happiness. Of

we need an honest approach to poverty, not one that blames the poor and leaves them to their fate. We know that the single most important key to ending the cycle of poverty is to enable today's children growing up in poverty to reach their full human potential. That in turn requires that America as a society invest in the human capital—meaning the health, nutrition, cognitive skill, and education—of every child in the nation, whether born to wealth or poverty.

America cut back on "welfare" from the 1970s onward. Family income support fell from 0.4 percent of GDP in 1970 to under 0.2 percent in 2010.16 Welfare still looms large in the public's imagination, but it plays little role in the budget and the deficit. It's been a long time since America was generous to its poor families with children! The

it is the provision of public services, notably the universal access to affordable day care, even more than income support to families, that is key to the elimination of poverty among families with children. Sweden's public services, of uniformly high quality, ensure a decent start for all children. Sweden

Markets cannot meet the needs of the very poor. The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit.

The most powerful tool for breaking extreme poverty is a holistic community-based development strategy that combines vocational training and job placement, early childhood development, educational upgrading, and local infrastructure. Each part of the antipoverty effort supports all of the others. This kind of ground-up development effort must in practice be led by the communities themselves but backed with financing from the federal and state governments. Options

There were pencil scrawls and ink stains, dried blood, snack crumbs; and the leather binding itself was secured to the lectern by a chain. Here was a book that contained the collected knowledge of the past while giving evidence of present social conditions...The dictionary contained every word in the English language but the chain knew only a few. It knew thief and steal and, maybe, purloined. The chain spoke of poverty and mistrust and inequality and decadence.

A healthy democracy cannot endure if only the wealthy are aware of and engaged in the process of governance while the poor and powerless are left uninformed and uninvolved." Alicia's penetrating gaze traveled

And as Miss Austen wrote, 'It is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

Why would you want to spend your money to go to countries where the people are so poor that they'd do anything to come over here?

In peacetime it was poverty, during the war it was the front that kept pushing people before it like a long row of dominos, people slept in other people's beds, used other people's cooking utensils, ate the stores of food that other people had been forced to leave behind. It's just that the rooms became more crowded the more the bombs fell.

Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.

Ser pobre é detalhe sem importância. Ser conhecido por ser pobre é que dói.

Six shillings a week does not keep body and soul together very unitedly.

No, there is nothing at all funny in poverty—to the poor. It is hell upon earth to a sensitive man; and many a brave gentleman who would have faced the labors of Hercules has had his heart broken by its petty miseries.

It is wonderful what an insight into domestic economy being really hard up gives one.

The princess wrote to her mother of her feelings about these activities: " … if one never sees poverty and always lives in that cold circle of Court people, one's good feelings dry up, and I feel the want of going about and doing the little good that is in my power." She added that "I am sure you will understand this.

I read somewhere that 77 percent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 percent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.