Poverty Quotes

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One who is by nature daring and is suffering from poverty will not long be law-abiding. Indeed, any men, save those that are truly good, if their sufferings are very great, will be likely to rebel.

Millions who endure poverty and bad government can now know what they are missing. To see how the other half lives all they have to do is switch on their television sets.

In the past, the poverty they shared had a certain sweetness about it. When the end of the day came and they would eat their dinner in silence with the oil lamp between them, there was a secret joy in such simplicity, such retrenchment.

Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.
Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

To be able to proclaim the Good News to the poor we must know what is poverty.

Be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested.

Henry David Thoreau

If your desires are not great, a little will seem much to you; for small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.

Sometimes the most important changes start in small places. The tides of history can leave people in conflict and exile and poverty. It takes time for those circumstances to change. But the recognition of a common humanity, the reconciliation of people bound by blood and a belief in one another — that's where progress begins. Understanding, and listening, and forgiveness.

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.

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

Benjamin Franklin

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

This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

New thinking. Unleashing growth that creates opportunity. Promoting development that lifts all people out of poverty. Supporting democracy that gives citizens their say. Advancing the security and justice that delivers peace. Respecting the human rights of all people. These are the keys to progress — not just in Africa, but around the world.

We close the century with most people still languishing in poverty, subjected to hunger, preventable disease, illiteracy and insufficient shelter.

On certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life.

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

John F. Kennedy

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Be present to those who, living in the midst of a society burdened by poverty and corruption, are broken in spirit, tempted to give up, to leave school and to live on the streets.

There is a saying in Tibetan that at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar. The point of this saying is not that poverty is a virtue, but that happiness does not come with wealth, but from setting limits to one's desires, and living within those limits with satisfaction.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things

Benjamin Franklin

Poverty is the fundamental cause of most of the physical, moral and economic ills of humanity.

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

George Bernard Shaw

All that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

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.