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Poverty Quotes

Browse 6296 quotes about Poverty.

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Poverty Quotes

“Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment are part and parcel of our economic order. Without them, capitalism would cease to function effectively, and in order to continue to function, the system itself must produce poverty and an army of underemployed or unemployed people.”

PeopleIfsLooksOrderLiteraturePoorPovertyEconomicProduceCapitalismFunctionArmyComplexesFolksCeaseLazyUnemploymentDeservingUnemployedParcelSociologicalUnintelligentEconomic OrderUnderemployed
Author:Bob Torres
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“If we're all led to believe that poverty is just a matter of laziness or stupidity or whatever other justifications we can come up with, then we're not likely to be in a real position to do much about it when it comes to attacking the root cause of the problem. Instead of demanding a more equitable system for the distribution of social and economic goods, we blame the victim. This is insidious, because ideology is something we carry around with us in our heads; it forms the basis of our day-to-day understanding of the world.”

IfsWorldBelieveRealMatterProblemFormSocialCausesUnderstandingPovertyEconomicPositionRootsBasesVictimBlameCome UpStupidityIdeologyGoodsLazinessJustificationDay To DayDistributionAttackingInsidiousEquitableRoot Cause
Book:Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
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“And every historic effort to forge a democratic project has been undermined by two fundamental realities: poverty and paranoia. The persistence of poverty generates levels of despair that deepen social conflict the escalation of paranoia produces levels of distrust that reinforce cultural division. Rae is the most explosive issue in American life precisely because it forces us to confront the tragic facts of poverty and paranoia despair, and distrust. In short, a candid examination of race matters takes us to the core of the crisis of American democracy (p. 107).”

Has BeensTwoMatterFactsRealityForceSocialLevelsEffortRacePovertyDemocracyIssuesProduceConflictDespairProjectsCrisisFundamentalsDemocraticCorePersistenceTragicDivisionDistrustHistoricExaminationParanoiaAmerican LifeExplosivesCandidAmerican DemocracyEscalation
Book:Race Matters: With a New Introduction
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“In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.”

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Book:Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study
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“Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.”

WantNeedsGivingNamesNationsCausesPoorPovertyOriginalsPlentyMannersCivilizedCustomsConsumerismOverconsumptionOpulenceCivilized Nations
Book:The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
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“Simplicity in its essence demands neither a vow of poverty nor a life of rural homesteading. As an ethic of self-conscious material moderation, it can be practiced in cities and suburbs, townhouses and condominiums. It requires neither a log cabin nor a hairshirt but a deliberate ordering of priorities so as to distinguish between the necessary and superfluous, useful and wasteful, beautiful and vulgar.”

SelfBeautifulCitiesPovertyMaterialsDemandEthicsConsciousEssenceSimplicityPrioritiesConsumerismModerationVulgarDeliberateVowSelf ConsciousSuburbsOverconsumptionSuperfluousCabinsHomesteadingLog Cabins
Author:David Shi
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“In an ecological perspective, in other words, there are few accidents or anomalies, only outcomes based on system structure and dynamics. Climate change and glittering malls, Calcuttan poverty and sybaritic wealth, biotic impoverishment and economic growth, militarism and terrorism, global domination and utter vulnerability are not different things but manifestations of a single system.”

DifferentGrowthWealthPovertyEconomicPerspectiveStructureClimateEnvironmentalClimate ChangeTerrorismAccidentsManifestationOutcomesVulnerabilityDifferent ThingsDominationEconomic GrowthEcologicalMallsDynamicsMilitarismAnomalies
Book:The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror
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“It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There must be thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.”

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Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
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“For the first time ever we are capable of removing abject poverty, illiteracy and the diseases of poverty from the human condition. The current intensification of global economic integration has demonstrated that there is enough knowledge, technology and capital to bring development to all the people of the world.”

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Author:Clare Short
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