“I've just begin to realize that the capacity to be interested is a luxury, you know? It gets handed down like property.”
Source: Poor George
“Wisdom isn’t about accumulating more facts; it’s about understanding big truths in a deeper way. Year by year, with the support and insights of friends and partners and people who have gone before me, I see more clearly that the primary causes of poverty and illness are the cultural, financial, and legal restrictions that block what women can do—and think they can do—for themselves and their children.”
Source: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
“…contraceptives are the greatest life-saving, poverty-ending, women-empowering innovation ever created.”
Source: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
“In fact, no country in the last fifty years has emerged from poverty without expanding access to contraceptives.”
Source: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
“My work has taught me a vital lesson. Each of us is more than the worse thing we've done. I am persuaded that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.”
Source: Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice
“But there was a sense of something tipping out of balance. The times seemed out of joint. There was too much decadence. Too much intensity. Too much change. Too much happiness juxtaposed with too much misery. Too much wealth next to too much poverty. The world was becoming faster and louder, and the social systems were becoming as chaotic and fragmented as jazz scores. So there was a craving, in some places, for simplicity, for order, for scapegoats and for bully-boy leaders, for nations to become like religions or cults. It happened every now and then.
It seemed, in the 1930s, that the whole course of humanity was at stake. As it very often does today. Too many people wanted to find an easy answer to complicated questions. It was a dangerous time to be human. To feel or to think or to care.”
Source: How to Stop Time
“Gender bias does worldwide damage. It’s a cause of low productivity on farms. It’s a source of poverty and disease. It’s at the core of social customs that keep women down.”
Source: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
“Have you ever played Monopoly? It's a board game designed to teach kids capitalism. And what happens in the end? The winner has all the money, and everyone else has nothing. Woohoo! So much fun! That's literally how America works. That's why there are a few super rich people who own almost everything, and tens of millions of dirt poor people who have nothing.”
Source: How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book
“God invented music so poor people could be happy.”
Source: A General Theory of Oblivion
“Nothing is a turnoff like a New York City housing authority kitchen. People want to hear about that once you're successful, not when you're living in it.”
Source: Notes from a Young Black Chef