Quotes About Poverty

Many people assume that since New Jersey is a wealthy state with a high per capita income that a lot of these issues of poverty and hunger don't exist, and the fact is that they do.

The government is more responsive to wealthy communities than poor communities, and to wealthy people than poor people.

Spending time in Soweto, and looking at the issues, and experiencing the poverty first-hand, had an enormous impact. I was brought up in a council house in South East London - I didn't have a privileged or wealthy upbringing - but looking at the scale of the problems there just left me dumbfounded.

You know, its interesting to me that so much of the population is living under the poverty line, but when you look at television, you would think that everybody is upper-middle class or wealthy.

Diarrhea, 90 percent of which is caused by food and water contaminated by excrement, kills a child every fifteen seconds. That's more than AIDS, malaria, or measles, combined. Human feces are an impressive weapon of mass destruction.

Food is a weapon in austerity Britain. Hunger, the threat of and the reality of, is used to coerce and control.

Trade is the all-but-forgotten weapon in the battle against poverty, but it can provide more help to the poor than aid can.

I believe we're stronger when we speak loudly and unapologetically for human rights; when we stand with our allies against common threats like terrorism, radicalization, and poverty; and when we unite to prevent the world's most dangerous regimes from acquiring the world's deadliest weapons.

We have weapons of mass destruction we have to address here at home. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction.

So, when you see a kid with ratty jeans on, wearing sneakers that aren't clean, you know they're in a certain place economically. I was interested in that experience.

I have crooked toes from wearing boots that didn't fit me because that's all I could afford as a kid.

The facts of the fossil record never justified denying poor people a healthy diet. The facts of the weather record do not justify denying poor people affordable energy. And no set of facts, whatever they may be, can justify denying scientists - or anyone else, for that matter - the right to free speech.

I grew up in an era of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a very big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there simply wasn't enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.

It's heartbreaking to see so many people trapped in a web of enforced idleness, deep debt, and gnawing self-doubt.

Poor people have to pay high rents to marriage halls for conducting functions like wedding. Therefore, to benefit them, I have directed constructing 'Amma Marriage Halls.'

It began to really eat away with me that in the '60s the federal government, desiring to help poor moms who were dealing with deadbeat dads, decided, 'We'll help: we'll give a check for every child you can have out of wedlock.'

Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.

Hillary Clinton understands that if someone in America this country works 40 hours a week, that person should not be living in poverty. She understands that we must raise the minimum wage to a living wage.

I met a landlord who will pay you to move at the end of the week and let you use his van. That's a really nice kind of eviction. I met a landlord who will take your door off. There are 101 ways to move a family out.

I eventually turned the fridge and freezer off - they were empty anyway - and the boiler, desperate to save money, shocking myself awake in the morning with the shortest, coldest showers, and boiling a kettle of water twice a week to bath my young son.

Late 19th-century America was basically a plutocratic enterprise while people toiled in mines and died of coal dust poisoning.

When you come from Poland, you have nothing. Your mother and father are working. You have only a bed for sleep. You have a kitchen, and that's it. You must fight.

My family was poor. My father was in the police force and was drawing a small salary. Because of that I could not study.