Quotes About Poverty

Progressive racism is dedicated to uplifting poor blacks to a certain point and then keeping them there. The proof is that poor blacks today are about as poorly off as they were a half-century ago, when the progressive schemes of black uplift went into place. Every other ethnic group in America has dramatically improved its life except this one. Blacks have delivered for progressives, but they haven't progressed very much themselves. This, I suggest, is by design.

Here we see how the plantation, which does not create employment for its inhabitants, nevertheless does provide stable employment to a whole class of academics, social workers and bureaucrats. The employment is stable because the plantation is permanent; there are no plans for it to ever be dismantled. The "war against poverty" is a perpetual fight in which poverty always wins because the game is rigged and the combatants are not fighting to win, only to hold the line.

Pine Ridge reservation, White Face told me, is one of the largest reservations in the country, and the poorest. Like other reservations, it is run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), an agency of the federal government. While in theory the native Indians are separate nations, in reality they are, as the Supreme Court once termed them, "dependent nations"—dependent on the government through the BIA.

Unequal prosperity is better than shared poverty.

Alinsky profited handsomely from his rackets. Even Hillary Clinton notes in her thesis that while Alinsky spoke endlessly about poverty and disadvantage, he himself lived very comfortably, far removed from the people on whose behalf he allegedly fought.21

This was one of the most significant political transformations in American history. Long-term, it has proven to be a terrible bargain for blacks. They have remained the worst-off group in America, surpassed even by poverty-stricken immigrants who came to this country much later with nothing. The inner city remains a kind of Third World enclave in America, and whether or not blacks realize it, the Democrats intend to keep it that way.

There used to be two of us always on the look-out for life, talking to Miss Blossom at night, wondering, hoping; two Bronte-Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle.

A thousand pounds for clothes — when one thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter! Oddly, I have never thought of us as poor people — I mean, I have never been terribly sorry for us, as for the unemployed or beggars; though really we have been rather worse off, being unemployable and with no one to beg from.

Half the world is redoing its kitchens, the other half is starving.

Once you live in the street, there's nothing but the street.

These things happen to poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it's the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters. People

Selfishness comes from poverty in the heart, from the belief that love is not abundant. We become selfish when we believe that maybe tomorrow we won't have any pizza but when we know that our heart is a magical kitchen, we are always generous, and our love is completely unconditional.

America is one of the few places in the world where a "poor" person can still be obese.6

Somehow I had come to believe that because a person is in need, they are candidates for sympathy, not just charity. It was not that I wanted to buy her groceries, the government was already doing that. I wanted to buy her dignity. And yet, by judging her, I was the one taking her dignity away.

The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest.

Name only one problem and make it the one the most people feel.

say something like that? The poor boy

a woman whom the course of years had turned sour and to whom the vows meant poverty of spirit, chastity of humour, and obedience only to some rigorous concept of duty.

A poor Negro has at least the excuse of his birth," Edie said. "The poor white has nothing to blame for his station but his own character. Well, of course, that won't do. That would mean having to assume some responsibility for his own laziness and sorry behavior. No, he'd much rather stomp around burning crosses and blaming the Negro for everything than go out and try to get an education or improve himself in any way.

No money, holes in my socks, living off oatmeal.

is no disgrace to be poor. The laborer who serves Christ faithfully is far more honorable in God's eyes than the nobleman who serves sin.

Our goals for this nation must be nothing less than to double the size of our economy and bring prosperity and jobs, ownership and equality of opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our nation's pockets of poverty.

Out of forty-eight boys twenty had never seen the Brooklyn Bridge that was scarcely five minutes' walk away, three only had been in Central Park, fifteen had known the joy of a ride in a horse-car. The street, with its ash-barrels and its dirt, the river that runs foul with mud, are their domain.

The slum is as old as civilization.