Quotes About Poverty

The origins of these [schooling] federal policies were tied to President Johnson's war on poverty. Supplemental funds were sent to school districts serving poor children to compensate for issues related to poverty. Since the enactment of NCLB, the focus on mitigating poverty has been replaced by a focus on accountability as measured by test scores.

There is a thought that poverty is a public policy failure; poverty is man-made by action and non-action: poverty can be eliminated.

A poverty learned with the humble, the poor, the sick and all those who are on the existential outskirts of life. A theoretical poverty is no use to us. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ, in the humble, in the poor, in the sick and in children.

The deepest need of humans is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of the soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace.

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.

We think of violence as being conflict and fighting and wars and so forth, but the most ongoing horrific measure of violence is in the horrible poverty of the Third World... and the poverty in the United States as well. We have our own Third World here. And we have to first become aware of that and how to help and solve that.

The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice.

The fact is, mental philosophy is very like Poverty, which, you know, begins at home; and indeed, when it goes abroad, it is poverty itself.

The 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.

At the current $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage has become a poverty wage. A full-time worker with one child lives below the official poverty line.

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.

For those who have lived on the edge of poverty all their lives, the semblance of poverty affected by the affluent is both incomprehensible and insulting.

The 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.

Poverty does not create our social problems...our social problems create our poverty.

Poverty is relative, and the lack of food and of the necessities of life is not necessarily a hardship. Spiritual and social ostracism, the invasion of your privacy, are what constitute the pain of poverty

I 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.

Instead of concentrating on the war against poverty, global attention is focused on another kind of slaughter - on something that is intangible and yet being tackled by all the possible military means we can muster. And all the lofty declarations by world leaders about combatting poverty that were lauded by the General Assembly turned out to be damp squibs.

He [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.

Poverty is everyone's problem. It cuts across any line you can name: age, race, social, geographic or religious. Whether you are black or white; rich, middle-class or poor, we are ALL touched by poverty

Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no; poverty and unhappiness are man's doing.

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.

Polak, a psychiatrist, has applied a behavioral and anthropological approach to alleviating poverty, developed by studying people in their natural surroundings. He argues that there are three mythic solutions to poverty eradication: donations, national economic growth, and big businesses. Instead, he advocates helping the poor earn money through their own efforts of developing low-cost tools that are effective and profitable.

We love to think this fundamentalism and terrorism is all about poverty, and, of course, it has a connection. You can see that these people not only are poor but they have no outlets. These governments allow no opposition. So what do people do? They go to Islam. It's the only organizational institution where they can express their feelings. But it's not about poverty. I've never seen a single demonstration in which the people have come out with signs saying, "Please give us better roads. Please give us new prenatal clinics. Please give us a new sewage system."

Poverty can't be an excuse for bad teaching, but teaching can't be the only thing we do to combat poverty.

Poverty is not an accident of, sort of, an economic spreadsheet. Poverty is a crime. There are criminals involved. And those criminals walk the streets as free men. What my music is about, and what - this from the riots in the streets of Greece and Spain to the people's uprisings in Egypt and Libya and Madison is about is holding those people accountable, those who are responsible for subverting the entire global economy and causing so much misery and then laughing about it with their, you know, clinking their champagne glasses on their yachts.

Our vow of chastity is nothing but our undivided love for Christ in chastity, then we proceed to the freedom of poverty-poverty is nothing but freedom. And that total surrender is obedience. If I belong to God, if I belong to Christ, then he must be able to use me. That is obedience. Then we give wholehearted service to the poor. That is service. They complete each other. That is our life.

Being born into poverty does not mean you are condemned to spend the rest of your life in poverty.

The greatest poverty in America today is time poverty. People have money, but they don't have time.

Armchair poverty tourism has been around as long as authors have written about class. As an author, I have struggled myself with the nuances of writing about poverty without reducing any community to a catalog of its difficulties.

Even if you can't get rid of the heat, as long as you can get rid of bother with the heat, your body is always on a cool terrace. Even if you can't get rid of poverty, as long as you can get rid of the sadness of poverty, your mind always lives in a comfortable abode.

A 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.

By helping the poor, we must be able to remove their poverty. But extending help to one here and one there in the form of providing food will not remove poverty.

The World Bank is the monopoly provider of poverty data and, partly due to a leadership change there, the World Bank's reporting has been heavily on the rosy side since about 2000. The Bank's cultivation of an upbeat picture affords a very interesting lesson in statistics and how you can, depending on which numbers you present and how you present them, create a more positive or more negative impression of the evolution of poverty.

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.

I know that in the rap game you've got a lot of people, that come from poverty, was born in poverty and if it wasn't for hiphop they'd still be living in that. So when I think of hiphop, I think hiphop saves lifes, hiphop changes lives.

When poverty declines, the need for government declines, which is why expecting government to solve poverty is like expecting a tobacco company to mount an aggressive anti-smoking campaign.

Poverty has its advantages. When you're that poor what would you have that anyone would want? Except your peace of mind. Your dignity. Your heart. The important things.

For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.

Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.

Liberty 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.

I think we will never find ultimate happiness. But I see a world of peace, harmony, laughter, love and non-violence and the elimination of poverty.

Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.

The trouble with poverty, as an issue, is that it has basically exhausted the patience of the general public.

I have the impression that when we talk so confidently of liberty, we are unaware of the awful ... servitude of poverty when means are so small that there is literally no choice at all.

There are millions and millions of people who are thrown in the midst of poverty and starvation. Animals don't die of starvation, only human beings.

Being in Marin City was like a small town so it taught me to be more [straightforward] with my style. Instead of of being so metaphorical with the rhyme, I was encouraged to go straight at it and hit it dead on and not waste time trying to cover thingsIn Marin City it seemed like things were real country. Everything was straightforward. Poverty was straightforward.

The choice of life is not between fame and fortune, nor wealth and poverty, but between good and evil.

I thank my parents for the greatest gift of all: poverty