Poverty Quotations

Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.

We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace.

Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

One of the greatest obstacles to escaping poverty is the staggering cost of higher education.

America has a critical place to play in the end of extreme poverty.

Nigeria has no business with poverty. With our human and material resources, we shall strive to eradicate poverty from our country.

There's a real sense of desperation when you grow up in poverty.

There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It's because America has such an ideology of success.

Blacks are about seven times more likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty than whites.

Stand-up comedy and poverty. Those were my two main endeavors.

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

When I was in high school, I used to have breakfast with my grandpa every morning. He instilled a lot of values in me: hard work, loyalty. He grew up during the Great Depression in Philly in poverty - he didn't have enough to eat as a kid. Sometimes his family would get kicked out of their apartment because they couldn't pay the rent.

We have to be bold in our national ambitions. First, we must win the fight against poverty within the next decade. Second, we must improve moral standards in government and society to provide a strong foundation for good governance. Third, we must change the character of our politics to promote fertile ground for reforms.

People can be so apathetic. They continue to ignore the real people trapped in poverty and homelessness. It's almost maddening

There was an undercurrent of poverty throughout my childhood. We lived with my grandmother in her two-bedroom flat, and I slept with my parents. We had cheap holidays, I had to save for my bike and get a paper round as soon as I was old enough.

America stands as a beacon of hope and the possibility of a better life - but it is also a nation where nearly 1 in 4 children live in poverty.

You don't seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.

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

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society.

Social Security not only helps Americans enjoy a secure retirement, it has also kept millions of Americans out of poverty.

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

If there is a spot where you have dictatorship, where people are not free, people are not satisfied, they do not find food and shelter, they are under the poverty level, this is a dangerous spot for the whole world, because those people will move, and they will move to different places. They will be carrying bad feelings towards others.

I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.

Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind.

Alleviating poverty would be the Bank's overarching objective.

I am bullish on the global development. I am bullish on billions of people getting out of poverty.

Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us. First, China does not export revolution; second, it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess around with you. So what else is there to say?

Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious.

Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.

It is widely known that the effects of childhood poverty follow children through adolescence and into adulthood.

The first priority of any serious program against poverty is to strengthen the male role in poor families.

Since Social Security was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 to ensure economic security for American workers, poverty among American seniors has dramatically declined.

I grew up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, but I didn't really know I was a deprived, poverty-stricken child until the media made me aware of it.

The future has already arrived. It's just not evenly distributed yet.

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

There are a lot of stats and a strong correlation between dropout rates and crime as well as poverty.

Inflation is taking up the poverty line, and poverty is not just economic but defined by way of health and education.

In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

He who bestows his goods upon the poor shall have as much again, and ten times more.

When you have a spiritual foundation, you look at poverty differently then.

The Global Poverty Project's mission is to stand up for the world's poorest people. We fight for the full funding of Millennium Development Goals and advocate meaningful change to government and corporate policies that block progress and entrench injustice.

All over the world, children facing the challenges of poverty attend schools that aren't designed to meet their extra needs; across country lines, the lives of marginalized kids look far more similar than they do different.

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

The chief problem of low-income farmers is poverty.

There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.

My Scottish Labour Party is a crusade - to fight poverty, inequality and injustice.

There are no quick fixes to Indigenous poverty and social disaster.

Handouts are not going to end global poverty, but work - real work - just might.

It is development, not poverty, that causes upheaval and terrorism.

I came from a very poor family and my main dream in life was to break out of this poverty.

Liberalism, above all, means emancipation - emancipation from one's fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination, from poverty.

The price of indulging yourself in your youth in the things you cannot afford is poverty and dependence in your old age.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

Everybody in politics claims to want to get everybody out of poverty. What's the opposite? Wealth. And what is often criticized by the left? Wealth.

The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.

I have never known so much naive conviction allied to greater intellectual poverty.

My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.

Hundreds of millions of human beings on our planet increasingly suffer from unemployment, poverty, hunger, and the destruction of their families.

You can't put a load of rockstars up on a stage and expect to wipe out global poverty. That's ludicrous.

That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.

There's only one thing money won't buy, and that is poverty.

I think that America in general is piratical. Every time we accept a paycheck for doing almost nothing, allowing us to live above the poverty line, we're engaging in piracy.

We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease.

You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.

Since the whole village was poor, we didnt realize our own poverty. I was happy.

First, I was so dazzled and besotted by India. People said the poverty was biblical, and I'm afraid that was my attitude, too. It's terribly easy to get used to someone else's poverty if you're living a middle-class life in it. But after a while, I saw it wasn't possible to accept it, and I also didn't want to.

Poverty must be reduced not only for reasons of moral and justice, but also of security.

Education can lift individuals out of poverty and into rewarding careers.

The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't always have the things you need, it's the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you'd do anything to lift that burden.

War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.

Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason

We will never end poverty if we don't tackle climate change.

There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty.

I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality.

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient.

They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

Poverty must have many satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor people.

The poor man wishes to conceal his poverty, and the rich man his wealth: the former fears lest he be despised, the latter lest he be plundered.

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.

The poverty one still sees in America today is more shocking to me than anything I have seen in Ethiopia or Calcutta or Manila, and has made me, as someone living in a society of great wealth and someone who's never had to worry about the next meal, think seriously about what universal responsibility really means.

First, women are more likely to live in poverty during their retirement years than are men.

A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread.

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty.

I would like to thank my parents in Vergaio, a little village in Italy. They gave me the biggest gift: poverty.

The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little.

Poverty is from the devil and that God wants all Christians prosperous.

I call for a march from exploitation to education, from poverty to shared prosperity, a march from slavery to liberty, and a march from violence to peace.

The explosive growth in places like Shanghai has helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into a thriving new middle class. What China has done is nothing short of an economic transformation, and the citizens of this country have every right to be proud.

Few save the poor feel for the poor.

The correlation between poverty and obesity can be traced to agricultural policies and subsidies.

Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it.

Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double.

Ending poverty calls for humility, honesty, freedom from ideology and refusal to accept cruel simplicities about anyone's human potential. It requires listening to the wisdom and cutting the nonsense from both the Right and the Left.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.