Poverty Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.

Those who minister to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two worst of all the crimes.

George Bernard Shaw

Today, homeownership is at its lowest rate in 51 years.... Lowest that its been in so many years, 51 years. Nearly 12 million people and more Americans are dependent on food stamps and 2 million more Latino Americans live in poverty under Obama and Clinton — under Obama; because Clinton's just gonna carry on.

Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty if not of color. They are chained by the weight of discrimination though its badge of degradation does not mark them. It corrupts their lives, frustrates their opportunities and withers their education. In one sense it is more evil for them because it has confused so many by prejudice that they have supported their own oppressors.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

John F. Kennedy

No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience, torpid through virtuous inaction, are more to me than corner lots and praise.

We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.

Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.

Thomas Jefferson

Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of the people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance.

John F. Kennedy

Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty. Because there are aspirations that human beings share — the liberty of knowing that your leader is accountable to you, and that you won't be locked up for disagreeing with them; the opportunity to get an education and to be able to work with dignity; the freedom to practice your faith without fear or restriction. Those are universal values that must be observed everywhere.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.

Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night.

But courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one's own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage.

Bertrand Russell

Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy.

Benjamin Franklin

As long as many of our people still live in utter poverty, as long as children still live under plastic covers, as long as many of our people are still without jobs, no South African should rest and wallow in the joy of freedom.

The true friend of the people should see that they be not too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character of the democracy.

The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people — people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent. Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. Some of the lodgers in our hotel lived lives that were curious beyond words.

Like dear St Francis of Assisi I am wedded to Poverty: but in my case the marriage is not a success.

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

The greatest of our evils and the worst of our crimes is poverty.

George Bernard Shaw

There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth losing a job; it is worth going to jail for. I would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self- respect.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty; none less inclined to take or touch aught which they have not honestly earned. Let them beware of surrendering a political power which they already possess, and which if surrendered will surely be used to close the door of advancement against such as they and to fix new disabilities and burdens upon them till all of liberty shall be lost.

Abraham Lincoln

The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger and so on, are human-created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama