Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Margaret Atwood

Quote by Margaret Atwood

“She’s a lean vixen: I can see the ribs, the sly trickster’s eyes, filled with longing and desperation, the skinny feet, adept at lies. Why encourage the notion of virtuous poverty? It’s only an excuse for zero charity. Hunger corrupts, and absolute hunger corrupts absolutely,”

Quote by Margaret Atwood

Book:Morning in the Burned House: Poems
Create image

Work

Morning in the Burned House: Poems

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is a renowned Canadian poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, born on November 18, 1939. Her works are known for their unique style and profound insights into social issues, with notable titles including 'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Cat's Eye'. more

You May Also Like

“El más pobre de los hombres nunca intercambiaría su salud por dinero, pero el más rico daría gustosamente todo su dinero por salud. Colton (1780-1832)”

WealthPovertyHealthPobrezaRiquezaSaludPoverty WealthPobres
Book:La dieta MIND, alimentación que ayuda a prevenir la enfermedad de Alzheimer: Tu cerebro puede estar sufriendo sin que te des cuenta
Create image

“G. Stanley Hall, a creature of his times, believed strongly that adolescence was determined – a fixed feature of human development that could be explained and accounted for in scientific fashion. To make his case, he relied on Haeckel's faulty recapitulation idea, Lombroso's faulty phrenology-inspired theories of crime, a plethora of anecdotes and one-sided interpretations of data. Given the issues, theories, standards and data-handling methods of his day, he did a superb job. But when you take away the shoddy theories, put the anecdotes in their place, and look for alternate explanations of the data, the bronze statue tumbles hard. I have no doubt that many of the street teens of Hall's time were suffering or insufferable, but it's a serious mistake to develop a timeless, universal theory of human nature around the peculiarities of the people of one's own time and place.”

ChildrenReasonScienceSufferingPovertyHistoryPsychologySocietyHuman NatureYouthTheoryLogicStressMathematicsImmigrationParentsDataRebellionChildTeensAdolescenceTeenageTeenagersPsychologistTurmoilScientific MethodAnecdotesYouthfulnessFreudYouth CultureData AnalysisPhrenologyYouthful Arrogance
Book:Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence
Create image

“Then he said the funny thing was the old man himself had left home when he was a kid, after a fight with his own father. The father lit into him for using the wheelbarrow. "It was this way. They always carried the feed to the horses, pail by pail. In the winter, when the horses were in the stalls. So my father took the notion to carry it to them in the wheelbarrow. Naturally it was a lot quicker. But he got beat. For laziness. That was the way they were, you know. Any change of any kind was a bad thing. Efficiency was just laziness, to them. That's the peasant thinking for you.”

PovertyConservatismParochialismBackwardness
Book:A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994
Create image

“Evictions were deserved, understood to be the outcome of individual failure. They “helped get rid of the riffraff,” some said. No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves. In years past, renters opposed landlords and saw themselves as a “class” with shared interests and a unified purpose. During the early twentieth century, tenants organized against evictions and unsanitary conditions. When landlords raised rents too often or too steeply, tenants went so far as to stage rent strikes. Strikers joined together to withhold rent and form picket lines, risking eviction, arrest, and beatings by hired thugs. They were not an especially radical bunch, these strikers. Most were ordinary mothers and fathers who believed landlords were entitled to modest rent increases and fair profits, but not “price gouging.” In New York City, the great rent wars of the Roaring Twenties forced a state legislature to impose rent controls that remain the country’s strongest to this day. Petitions, picket lines, civil disobedience—this kind of political mobilization required a certain shift in vision.”

ClassPovertyEvictionRentingRenters
Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Create image

“Then I told him, ‘Injustice, Poverty and Discrimination is faced by a lot of Indians, and also majority, the fact is that if you “Minority” stop thinking yourself as a part of “Minority” and start thinking as the part of India, and proceed together for it’s good, then only “Minority” and majority would progress altogether.”

PovertyProgressMajorityInjusticeDiscriminationMinorityIndians
Book:Friendship, Love & Sacrifice
Create image