Quotes About Poverty

The cost of money rises dramatically if you can't afford to keep it in a bank.

I come from a working class family. We barely had anything.

There shouldn't be a barrier between rich and poor in terms of the kind of health care that they can access.

My father worked hard, but we were still very poor; and I didn't want anybody arguing about money, so I became the entertainer - the one who wanted everyone to be happy. I didn't want there to be any problems.

I lived below the poverty line when I was young and starting out as a writer. But my wife and I kept trying to do things better, as anyone with ambition does. But just because you're trying doesn't mean you're always going to succeed.

Having stumbled upon a tolerable career, for the first time in my life I was actually living above the poverty line. My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.

Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty or attend dilapidated schools or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career. Perhaps it causes us to examine what we're doing to cause some of our children to hate.

King continued: "It seems that I can hear the God of history saying, 'That was not enough! But I was hungry, and ye fed me not. I was naked, and ye clothed me not. I was devoid of a decent sanitary house to live in, and ye provided no shelter for me. And consequently, you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness. If ye do it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye do it unto me.' That's the question facing America today.

People ask, "Why is there poverty in the world?" It's a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil.

Capitalism is unnatural. Democracy is unnatural. Human rights are unnatural. The world we live in today is unnatural, and we stumble into it more or less by accident. The natural state of mankind is grinding poverty punctuated by horrific violence terminating with an early death. It was like this for a very very long time.

My poverty was always a source of disappointment to her. If only she could have waited a few years

Yes, but that's because you're not poor. When you're poor, things just happen to you. You feel like you can't control anything. You're completely at God's mercy. That's why Jesus tells us that the poor are blessed—because having nothing brings you closer to God." "That woman didn't strike me as being especially close to God.

People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want to.

People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles. You may be poor, but the one thing nobody can take away from you is the freedom to fuck up your life whatever way you want

Poor people smoked, poor people ate Krispy Kreme doughnuts by the dozen. Poor people were made pregnant by close relatives. Poor people practiced poor hygiene and lived in toxic neighborhoods. Poor people with their ailments constituted a subspecies of humanity that thankfully remained invisible to Gary except in hospitals and in places like Central Discount Medical.

People came to this country for either money or freedom. If you don't have money, you cling to your freedoms all the more angrily. Even if smoking kills you, even if you can't afford to feed your kids, even if your kids are getting shot down by maniacs with assault rifles.

Along the deserted road to the gas station were mercury-vapor lights that seemed weaker than those in New Prospect, as if Navajo impoverishment extended even to amperage.

Equal funding is opposed for opposite reasons: either because it won't improve or benefit the poorer schools—not "necessarily," the governor's assistant says—or because it would improve and benefit those schools but would be subtracting something from the other districts, and the other districts view this as unjust.

The UN special envoy on food called it a 'crime against humanity' to funnel 100 million tons of grain and corn to ethanol when almost a billion people are starving. So what kind of crime is animal agriculture, which uses 756 million tons of grain and corn per year, much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion human who are living in dire poverty?

270,000 more people become hungry each day).

Poor Nations are hungry, and rich Nations are proud, and Pride and Hunger will ever be at Variance.

nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

It is a melancholy object to walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and all importuning every passenger for an alms.

Remember, Christ willed to be born poor, and He chose disciples who were living, for the most part, in poverty. Christ made Himself a servant of poor people. And He reminds us that whatever we do to help the least of the brethren--those most poor--we are personally ministering to Him.