Popular quotes about Poverty! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Many people theorize poverty, but so many elements of poverty, individually, for most people who theorize about poverty would be really difficult to even comprehend the individual things. Just take homelessness. If you are homeless, what does it mean not to have a post box where people can contact you; what does it mean not knowing where you're going to sleep at the end of the day; what does it mean not having a place where you can store what little you might possess. So dealing with homelessness in itself is a huge thing for most people who are commentators [on] or benefactors to poverty.
Kumi NaidooRacism is not nearly as important as poverty. That's the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at all these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war.
Marjane SatrapiThere is a thought that poverty is a public policy failure; poverty is man-made by action and non-action: poverty can be eliminated.
Benjamin MkapaThere is little favorable to be said about poverty, but it was often an incubator of true friendship. Many people will appear to befriend you when you are wealthy, but precious few will do the same when you are poor. If wealth is a magnet, poverty is a kind of repellent. Yet, poverty often brings out the true generosity in others.
Nelson MandelaOn certain continents poverty is more spiritual than material, a poverty that consists of loneliness, discouragement, and the lack of meaning in life.
Mother TeresaConservatives say the government can't end poverty by force, but they believe it can use force to make people moral. Liberals say government can't make people be moral, but they believe it can end poverty. Neither group attempts to explain why government is so clumsy and destructive in one area but a paragon of efficiency and benevolence in the other.
Harry BrowneI was put into office by the people who believed in my idea that corruption is the root of poverty; that an end to corruption would mean an end to poverty.
Benigno Aquino IIIThe truth is, the greatest tool to lift children and families from poverty is one that decreases the probability of child poverty by 82%. But it isn't a government spending program. It's called marriage.
Marco RubioThe real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.
Milton FriedmanIt is important to remember when reading Adam Smith or even when just thinking about Smith that the era that he lived in, we're not talking about poverty in a day when it meant not enough bedrooms for the kids, an old car, a black and white television. We're talking about a whole world where poverty meant not enough to eat.
P. J. O'RourkePoverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.
Christian Nestell BoveeโHonoured sir, poverty is not a vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkeness is not a virtue, and that's even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary--never--no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary as I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself.
Fyodor DostoevskyNot only subjective poverty is never overcome by growth, but absolute poverty is increased by it. ... Absolute misery grows while wealth increases.
Joan RobinsonPoor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong in their seeds. Simply, society never gave them the base to grow on. All it needs to get the poor people out of poverty for us to create an enabling environment for them. Once the poor can unleash their energy and creativity, poverty will disappear very quickly.
Muhammad YunusIt is not poverty that we praise, it is the man whom poverty cannot humble or bend.
Seneca the YoungerI have heard it said that families with many children and high birth rates are among the cause of poverty. It seems to me a simplistic opinion. I can say that the main cause of poverty is an economic system that has removed the person from the center.
Pope FrancisFor if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
George OrwellHe [Hugo Chavez] put poverty at the heart of political debate. Rightly so, given the country's immense inequality and poverty. He invested heavily in social programs such as literacy, health clinics, and education. He promoted Venezuela's indigenous culture and urged compatriots to take pride in its pre-Columbian history. He called time on the US treating Latin America as its backyard.
Rory Carroll...I swore I would battle not only for myself but for freedom and opportunity for everything living that wore chains, especially sex chains. It that meant poverty for myself and my boy then poverty we should have to suffer. If it meant social ostracism, if it meant relinquishing the literary success that lay within my grasp, then let the success go.
Rheta Childe DorrWell, you can do whatever you want, but just donโt call it inequality. Put the word poverty there. Because we have many rich people on our board, and when they see the word poverty that makes them feel good, because [it means] theyโre really nice people who care about the poor. When they see the word inequality it makes them upset, because [it means] you want to take money from them.
Branko MilanovicFreedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit. People, worldwide, hunger for the right of self-determination, for those inalienable rights that make for human dignity and progress. America must remain freedom's staunchest friend, for freedom is our best ally and it is the world's only hope to conquer poverty and preserve peace. Every blow we inflict against poverty will be a blow against its dark allies of oppression and war. Every victory for human freedom will be a victory for world peace.
Ronald ReaganNow, you might say โ โBut why should we pay people for doing what theyโre supposed to do?โ Itโs a fair question โ but think of it this way: Every other anti-poverty program thatโs been tried has failed to get the national poverty rate below 11 percent... Why shouldnโt we experiment with a program built around the one strategy that has proven time and again to work wonders โ capitalism?
Michael BloombergBeing born into poverty does not mean you are condemned to spend the rest of your life in poverty.
Kevin HarringtonYeah, remember, under the Bush administration, welfare โ I mean, excuse me, poverty among African Americans and among single unmarried women, poverty was at the lowest rate ever in the history of this country. So Obamaโs policies are not working, Bush polices worked! For long a time as a matter of fact.
Rick SantorumThose who automatically say that the social pathology of the ghetto is due to poverty discrimination and the like cannot explain why such pathology was far less prevalent in the 1950s, when poverty and discrimination were worse. But there were not nearly as many grievance mongers and race hustlers then.
Thomas SowellI grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.
Albert CamusA few hundred years ago, perhaps 85 or even 90 percent of humanity lived below a standard of living that today only 40 or 45 percent fail to reach. But at that earlier time only part of this poverty could have been eradicated, and this at substantial cost not only to the pleasures of the affluent, but also to their well-being and to human culture. In our time, nearly all severe poverty could be eradicated at a cost to the affluent that is truly trivial.
Thomas PoggeMartin Luther King was talking about racism, war and poverty. I think we have made progress enormous progress in racism and war, but we have made little or no progress in poverty. And it's because the economy has gotten more and more complex as we have globalized.
Andrew YoungContrary to age-old prejudices, the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but helps to alleviate that poverty.
Henry HazlittThe media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue.
Jim WallisLiberty and freedom were the primary reason that people wanted to come here. They wanted to escape bondage, slavery, tyranny, poverty, whatever, where they lived. It was America that promised a much better life.
Rush LimbaughLiteracy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development... For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right.... Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.
Kofi AnnanWhen you get a mobile phone it is almost like having a card to get you out of poverty in a couple of years.
Muhammad YunusThis 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 EmersonAnecdote: The East End seemed to be in the grip of yet another economic crisis. ... By the winter of 1933, an army of the unemployed gathered daily outside the dock gates, desperate for a day or 2 paid work. .... There was no cushion, no disaster fund, no stashed savings, no government handouts no syrup that could sweeten the bitter pill of poverty.
Melanie McGrathGold gives an appearance of beauty even to ugliness: But with poverty everything becomes frightful.
Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux...Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrendered their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.
John AdamsChile needs to unite behind the goals of reducing poverty and creating more equal opportunities so that everyone can benefit from what the country has to offer.
Michelle BacheletPride is the utter poverty of soul disguised as riches, imaginary light where in fact there is darkness.
John ClimacusThe biggest fight in my life is not in boxing. The biggest fight in my life is how to end poverty in my country.
Manny PacquiaoWe are close to a time when all of humankind will envision a global agenda that encompasses a kind of Global Marshall Plan to address the causes of poverty and suffering and environmental destruction all over the earth.
Al GoreMy grandmother instilled in me two important lessons: I was just as good as anyone else, and education was my salvation. Fortunately, I was able to get scholarships to excellent schools, but I was one of the lucky ones. All of this is what draws me to anti-poverty organizations like Oxfam.
Joy BryantThere are many cases in which gifted children have done great things without special school programs. There are also gifted kids who have been to special schools and achieved nothing that has benefited the world as a whole. Without solid evidence, I have no confidence that funding school programs for the intellectually gifted would do more good than the most cost-effective programs to help people in extreme poverty.
Peter Singer