POVERTY QUOTES
quotations about poverty
The fact is that this generation -- yours, my generation ... we're the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this sort of stupid extreme poverty, where in the world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in it's belly.
BONO
PENN Address, 2004
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Poverty keeps the vision pure.
ROBERT LEIGHTON
"Let Us Rejoice That We Are Poor"
Poverty is a noose that strangles humility and breeds disrespect for God and man.
NATIVE AMERICAN PROVERB
It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty.
JUVENAL
Satires
It is not usually the case that from the ranks of wealth and ease men come forth to do grand things. Poverty has in many cases wrought wonders, while wealth has enjoyed herself in her abundance. Guthrie says that those birds soar the highest that have had the hardest upbringing. Warm and soft is the pretty nest where, under the cover of her wings, amid green leaves and golden tassels and the perfume of flowers, the mother bird, of sweet voice, but short and feeble flight, rears her tender brood. Not thus are eagles reared. Their cradle is an open shelf; their nest a few rough sticks spread on the bare rock, where they are exposed to the rain and the blast that howls through the glen. Such is the nursing of the bird that afterward soars in sunny skies and with strong wings cleaves the clouds and rides upon the storm. Even so God often nurses amid difficulties and hardships those who are destined to rise to eminence and accomplish great deeds on earth.
HENRY F. KLETZING & ELMER L. KLETZING
"Famous Sons of Poverty", Traits of Character Illustrated in Bible Light
For the poor any choice was a gift with two faces.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Cities of the Plain
Any strategy to reduce intergenerational poverty has to be centered on work, not welfare--not only because work provides independence and income but also because work provides order, structure, dignity, and opportunities for growth in people's lives.
BARACK OBAMA
The Audacity of Hope
Poverty too often turns the milk of human kindness into gall.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Poverty is very good in poems ... in maxims and in sermons, but it is very bad in practical life.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Poverty, we are assured, is an 'error,' like ill-health and crime. It is an anachronism in civilization, a stain upon a wisely governed land. But into our country which, after a human fashion, is both wise and foolish, pours the poverty of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants with but a few dollars between them and want; with scant equipment, physical or mental, for the struggle of life; with an inheritance of feebleness from ill-nourished generations before them -- this is the problem which the United States faces courageously, and solves as best she can. What she cannot do is miraculously to convert poverty into plenty --certainly not before the next year doubles, and the third year trebles the miracle-seeking multitude. She cannot properly house or profitably employ a million of immigrants before the next million is clamoring at her doors.
AGNES REPPLIER
"Our Lady Poverty", Atlantic Classics
Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society -- how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.
MUHAMMAD YUNUS
Creating a World Without Poverty
Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue; it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
speech on the 24th anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., April 1886
What keeps some persons poor? and what has made some others rich? The true answers to these queries would often make the poor man more proud of his poverty, than the rich man is of his wealth, and the rich man more justly ashamed of his wealth, than the poor man unjustly now is, of his poverty.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
With poverty everything becomes frightful.
NICOLAS BOILEAU
Satires
Truly, whoever possesses little is that much less possessed: praised be a little poverty!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
A hungry man is not a free man.
ADLAI STEVENSON
speech, September 6, 1952
Feel like a broke-down engine, ain't got no drivin' wheel.
You all been down and lonesome, you know just how a poor man feels.
BOB DYLAN
"Broke Down Engine"
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is profoundly inconvenient.
SYDNEY SMITH
His Wit and Wisdom