Quotes about Poverty

    What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.
    The hour when you say, 'What matters my happiness? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself.'
    The hour when you say, 'What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge as the lion his food? It is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'
    The hour when you say, 'What matters my virtue? As yet it has not made me rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! All that is poverty and filth and wretched contentment.'

Civil disobedience. . . is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity and war and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem.

Zan Yu said, "Once there are so many people, what should be done?"

"Enrich them," said the Master.

"Once they are enriched, what next?"

"Educate them."

I'm a slumdog philosopher.

Now they want to crush the poor as they were once crushed. Memory does not always arrive whole from its journeys across the generations.

For one thing, environmentalism is a luxury.  Just like being a vegetarian is a luxury. When you have to worry about eating - you're not going to be worried about where the food's coming from, or who made your shoes.  Poverty, whether planned or not planned, is a way of making environmentalism moot. Even this discussion is a luxury.

He had not a cent in his pocket, but he had faith.  He had decided, the night before, that he would be as much an adventurer as the ones he had admired in books.

If your everyday life seems poor, do not blame it; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place.

Poverty is a great equalizer.

While rich men make the laws, there will always be poverty

We are living in a phenomenal age. If we can spend the early decades of the 21st century finding approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits and recognition for business, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce poverty in the world.

If I feel depressed I will sing.
If I feel sad I will laugh.
If I feel ill I will double my labor.
If I feel fear I will plunge ahead.
If I feel inferior I will wear new garments.
If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice.
If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come.
If I feel incompetent I will think of past success.
If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals.
Today I will be the master of my emotions.

"A child born to a black mother in a state like Mississippi . . . has the same rights as a white baby born to the wealthiest person in the United States. It's not true, but I challenge anyone to say it is not a goal worth working for."

In the world of development, if one mixes the poor and the nonpoor in a program, the nonpoor will always drive out the poor, and the less poor will drive out the more poor, unless protective measures are instituted right at the beginning.  In such cases, the nonpoor reap the benefits of all that is done in the name of the poor.

I adopted a begging posture that suggested genteel poverty combined with a certain affable nonchalance. People found this irresistible. They lavished money on me. Within days I exceeded ten dollars an hour. I began to save money and even, following Blue’s lead, tithed to the less fortunate. I became less pessimistic, thought less about how cruel the streets can be. I actually considered begging a legitimate career possibility.

You have to do that here in your country. You must come to know the poor. Maybe our people here have material things, everything, but I think that if we all look into our own homes, how difficult we find it sometimes to smile at each other, and that the smile is the beginning of love.

I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people.

Selfishness comes from poverty in the heart, from the belief that love is not abundant.

Poverty, I realized, wasn't only a lack of financial resources; it was isolation from the kind of people that could help you make more of yourself.

In a world of plenty, continued suffering is a terrible stain on our conscience. It is inexcusable that we not strive, with every resource at our disposal, to eliminate suffering.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.

He was a well whiskey on the rocks kind of guy. Draw your own conclusions, but let's just say it had something to do with the poor.

Poor ppl are a like bonsai tree, a little tree.  You pick the seed of the tallest tree in the forest and take the best seed out of it, and plant it in a flower pot.  You get a tiny little tree, we call it a bonsai.  Nothing wrong with the seed, you've got the best seed possible.  Nothing wrong with the tree, because you actually picked the tallest tree in the forest.  But actually it grows this far... why?  Because we put them in the flower pot.  The base.  Society is the base.  And society is so stingy it doesn't give the poor ppl the space to grow.

So i say, change the base!  If you change the base, anybody will be as tall as anybody else!  My belief is poverty is not caused by poor ppl.  Poverty is caused by the system.  Poverty is caused by the policies that we pursue.

What the poor need most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being.

Make us, Lord, worthy to serve our brothers and sisters who are scattered all over the world, who live and die alone and poor. Give them today, using our hands, their daily bread. And, using our love, give them peace and happiness. Amen.

When it is difficult for millions to make even the two ends meet, when millions are dying of starvation, it is monstrous to think of giving our relatives a costly education. Expansion of the mind will come from hard experience, not necessarily in the college or in the schoolroom....  The golden rule to apply in all such cases is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. THis ability to refuse will not descend upon us all of a sudden. The first thing is to cultivate the mental attitude that we will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions, and the next immediate thing is to rearrange our lives as fast as possible in accordance with our mentality.

I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, none hour in the day we should all do the labor the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them, with all mankind.

[It] is impossible for us to establish a living vital connection with the masses unless we will work for them, through them and in their midst, not as their parons but as their servants.