Poverty Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Once I knew the City very well, spent my attic days there, while others were being a lost generation in Paris, I fledged in San Francisco, climbed its hills. slept in its parks, worked on its docks, marched and shouted in its revolts~ It had been to me in the days of my poverty and it did not resent my temporary solvency.

This Congress did more to uplift education, more to attack disease in this country and around the world, and more to conquer poverty than any other session in all American history, and what more worthy achievements could any person want to have? For it was the Congress that was more true than any other Congress to Thomas Jefferson's belief that: 'The care of human life and happiness is the first and only legitimate objective of good Government.'

Lyndon B. Johnson

In the free market, a man born into wealth or who has otherwise acquired great riches can lose his fortune depending on how he chooses to behave. Conversely, a man born into poverty or who has lost wealth once obtained can acquire a fortune, depending, again, on how he chooses to behave.

Great wants proceed from great wealth; but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.

Henry Home, Lord Kames

When poverty shows itself, even mischievous boys understand what it means.

The only way to break the cycle of unwed motherhood, fatherless children, poverty, crime, and welfare is to recognize that welfare causes more problems than it cures.

Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence, --the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all.

I also believe my home state is cursed by ignorance and poverty and racism, much of it deliberately inculcated to control a vulnerable electorate. And I believe many of the politicians in Louisiana are among the most stomach-churning examples of white trash and venality I have ever known. To me, the fact that large numbers of people find them humorously picaresque is mind numbing, on a level with telling fond tales of one's rapist.

James Lee Burke

Far from the West having caused the poverty in the Third World, contact with the West has been the principal agent of material progress there.

Peter Thomas Bauer

Very early in my childhood I associated poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, jail with large families.

Margaret Sanger

Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny. Pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich.

Swami Vivekananda

God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am. Because of this I don't need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him. I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness.

Brennan Manning

Poverty made me feel weak, as if I were coming down with an awful, debilitating, communicable disease - the disease of being without money. Instead of going to the hospital, you went to the poor farm. The difference was, you never got well at the poor farm.

The broken image of Man moves in minute by minute and cell by cell.... Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus.

William S. Burroughs

What happiness the rural maid attends, In cheerful labour while each day she spends! She gratefully receives what Heav'n has sent, And, rich in poverty, enjoys content.

Haiti is the kind of place that grabs your heart, and never lets go... When you arrive in Port-au-Prince, the first thing that strikes you is how vibrant the colors are. Buses, buildings, fences, clothing, everything is brightly painted in primary hues. On closer inspection, you see the reality behind this brightly colored landscape: a dark, grinding poverty, the worst in the Western hemisphere.

Andrea Mitchell

The riches of successful entrepreneurs is not the cause of anybody's poverty; it is the consequence of the fact that the consumers are better supplied than they would have been in the absence of the entrepreneur's efforts.

Ludwig von Mises

If we from wealth to poverty descend,
Want gives to know the flatterer from the friend.

EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.

O Poverty, thy thousand ills combined Sink not so deep into the generous mind, As the contempt and laughter of mankind.

Never be diplomatic and careful about the treasure God gives. This is poverty triumphant.

Oswald Chambers

The chemists are a strange class of mortals impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may I die if I would change places with the Persian King.

Johann Joachim Becher

Poverty with security is better than plenty in the midst of fear and uncertainty.

He who accepts his poverty unhurt I'd say is rich although he lacked a shirt. But truly poor are they who whine and fret and covet what they cannot hope to get.

Geoffrey Chaucer

Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced -- there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail.