Quotes About Poverty

My parents, neither one of them went to college. That wasn't available to them. But, you know, we had a wonderful life. You know, it - you know, we lived in what would now be considered poverty, but, you know, it didn't feel like poverty when I was living it. I had a great time and got a - had a great experience. I went to Catholic school through high school. I had a wonderful education.

I believe the war on poverty is a more American idea than the war on the war on poverty. I believe that most people feel like that. And I believe that it ain't over till it's over.

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

It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.

There is no worse material poverty, I am keen to stress, than the poverty which prevents people from earning their bread and deprives them of the dignity of work.

I 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.

To say that poverty explains terror is to slander those caught in poverty who choose to lead worthy lives. [Terrorists] are not the oppressed, but they are the parasites of the oppressed.

...let us recognize that extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere. Let us recall that poverty is a denial of human rights. For the first time in history, in this age of unprecedented wealth and technical prowess, we have the power to save humanity from this shameful scourge. Let us summon the will to do it.

Poverty calls us to sow hope.... Poverty is the flesh of the poor Jesus, in that child who is hungry, in the one who is sick, in those unjust social structures.

At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that laborsaving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past... From Progress and Poverty, To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment.

The greatest percentage of poverty is found in female-headed households. Over 70 percent of female-headed households are poor. A large percentage of poor people are children (17 percent); fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.

Poverty 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.

Here's Williams' roadmap out of poverty: Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.

Poverty with joy isn't poverty at all. The poor man is not one who has little, but one who hankers after more.

People see poverty all around them in India, but they are desensitized or immune to it. I came to the conclusion that poverty is driven by lack of education.

We think of poverty as a condition simply meaning a lack of funds, no money, but when one sees fifth, sixth, and seventh generation poor, it is clear that poverty is as complicated as high finance.

Anyone who lives with poor health or chronic pain, or who has endured poverty - real poverty - knows what it is to live with lack and a resulting fear so incessant that it becomes thoroughly normalized, invisible in its ubiquity. If you're lucky enough to have that fear begin to ease, it's an odd experience. A stranglehold eases off your entire body, one you never fully realized was there.

I've been doing music for many years and after a point what is the motivation that drives you to compose and to do stuff? I did this song for the U.N., a fighting for poverty anthem. That's when I realized that I could do a foundation. And when I started the foundation, it was basically to fight poverty and to help - that kind of stuff.

The intergenerational poverty that troubles us so much today is predominantly a poverty of values.

I can't help but react to the painful realities of the two-tiered society we live in, where the signs of poverty and inequity are everywhere. Almost twenty five percent of our children live at or below the poverty line. We expect the no-option life cycle of the poor to be interrupted by the weak social safety net and then wonder why building more jails doesn't solve the problems.

I will use the rest of my life to help the poor overcome the problems confronting them - poverty is the greatest challenge facing humanity. That is why I build schools; I want to free people from poverty and illiteracy.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.

When you read Marx (or Jesus) this way, you come to see that real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.

With segregation, with the isolation of the injured and the robbed, comes the concentration of disadvantage. An unsegregated America might see poverty, and all its effects, spread across the country with no particular bias toward skin color. Instead, the concentration of poverty has been paired with a concentration of melanin.

it is impossible to attack the problem of poverty in the industrialized or the developing world effectively unless the extent to which poverty is a women's problem is recognized.

It seems to me that large numbers of people are now paying attention to poverty and that large numbers now understand that blaming the poor and the insecure for being poor and insecure is as unseemly as is schoolyard bullying. In that realization lies hope for a reinvigorated discourse around poverty and inequity in modern-day America.

Poverty without a people's government looks like hopelessness, but to see poverty in organized communities is to see relief-in-progress.

In the developed countries there is a poverty of intimacy, a poverty of spirit, of loneliness, of lack of love. There is no greater sickness in the world today than that one.

The world's most 'primitive' people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization. It has grown with civilization, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary relation.

Both poverty and wealth, therefore, have a bad effect on the quality of the work and the workman himself. Wealth and poverty, I answered. One produces luxury and idleness and a passion for novelty, the other meanness and bad workmanship and revolution into the bargain.

Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom. The truth or falsity of his prediction will depend now, with the tools we have, on our own actions, now and in the years to come.

Our foremost priority is the removal of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, disease and illiteracy. All social welfare programmes must be implemented efficiently. Agencies involved in the delivery of services should have a strong sense of duty and work in a transparent, corruption-free, time-bound and accountable manner.

I am poor and feeble, persecuted and vulnerable, Yeshua conquered me, and with the New Man he honored me, He delivered me from the poverty-stricken self with his great love, he cherishes me.

Social Security is one of the greatest achievements of the American government, protecting our elderly against poverty and assuring young people of a more secure future.

Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don't do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don't increase the amount of aid we are giving.

Barack Obama's been president for about eight hours; President Obama was here for eight years. So if you want to talk about numbers that matter, it's quantifying all the losses - the women who were slid into poverty, those who can't find meaningful work, and their children who deserve a better life.

Bolivia also depends not only on tin and other minerals, but also depends on the gas and oil. A rational extraction should be made, taking care of the environment. We should give added value to this natural resource, and generate revenue to fight poverty with more resources, that come from natural resources.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful.

The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.

It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.

What He was, He laid aside; what He was not, He assumed. He takes upon Himself the poverty of my flesh so that I may receive the riches of His divinity.

In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry or idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then, and their future life is safe.

The purpose and effect of [land titles] have been to maintain, in the hands of robber, or slave holding class, a monopoly of all lands, and, as far as possible, of all other means of creating wealth; and thus to keep the great body of labourers in such a state of poverty and dependence, as would compel them to sell their labour to their tyrants for the lowest prices at which life could be sustained

Poverty is a lot like childbirth - you know it is going to hurt before it happens, but you'll never know how much until you experience it.

I thought in this country, the best social program was a job. Yet minimum wage jobs arent paying enough to keep families out of poverty

These days there is a lot of poverty in the world, and that's a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone. We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.