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Poverty Quotes

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Poverty Quotes

“The child was diseased at birth, stricken with a hereditary ill that only the most vital men are able to shake off. I mean poverty-the most deadly and prevalent of all diseases.”

Men Mean Children Able Poverty Birth Disease Ill Shakes Diseased Hereditary

Book:Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill

Source: Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill

“As it was 189 years ago, so today the cause of America is a revolutionary cause. And I am proud this morning to salute you as fellow revolutionaries. Neither you nor I are willing to accept the tyranny of poverty, nor the dictatorship of ignorance, nor the despotism of ill health, nor the oppression of bias and prejudice and bigotry. We want change. We want progress. We want it both abroad and at homeand we aim to get it.”

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966

“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.”

Wells Poverty Ill Reading Books Cents Intrigued Mentally Ill

Author:Jerry Garcia

“The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.”

Firsts Existence Poverty Conscience Charity Ill Awakening Proof Unjust Robbers Organised

Book:Essays divine and human with thoughts and aphorisms

Source: Essays divine and human with thoughts and aphorisms

“It is said that the Negro is ignorant. But why is he ignorant? It comes with ill grace from a man who has put out my eyes to makea parade of my blindness,--to reproach me for my poverty when he has wronged me of my money.... If he is poor, what has become of the money he has been earning for the last two hundred and fifty years? Years ago it was said cotton fights and cotton conquers for American slavery. The Negro helped build up that great cotton power in the South, and in the North his sigh was in the whir of its machinery, and his blood and tears upon the warp and woof of its manufactures.”

“Poverty, we may say, surrounds a man with ready-made barriers, which if they do mournfully gall and hamper, do at least prescribe for him, and force on him, a sort of course and goal; a safe and beaten, though a circuitous, course. A great part of his guidance is secure against fatal error, is withdrawn from his control. The rich, again, has his whole life to guide, without goal or barrier, save of his own choosing, and, tempted, is too likely to guide it ill.”

Ifs Men Life May Made Whole Courses Force Goal Poverty Rich Ready Safe Errors Ill Guides Whole Life Secure Guidance Barriers Surround Beaten Tempted Hamper

Book:The Works of Thomas Carlyle

Source: The Works of Thomas Carlyle

“When you set about your composing, it may be necessary for your ease, and better distillation of wit, to put on your worst clothes, and the worse the better; for an author, like a limbeck, will yield the better for having a rag about him: besides that, I have observed a gardener cut the outward rind of a tree (which is the surtout of it) to make it bear well; and this is a natural account of the usual poverty of poets, and is an argument why wits, of all men living, ought to be ill clad.”

Source: The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical

“Materialism blinds us to our spiritual poverty. Jesus rebuked the Laodicean Christians because although they were materially wealthy, they were desperately poor in the things of God . Puritan Richard Baxter said, "When men prosper in the world, their minds are lifted up with their estates, and they can hardly believe that they are so ill, while they feel themselves so well."”

Men World Mind Believe Christian Spiritual Jesus Poor Poverty Ill Materialism Wealthy Puritan

Author:Randy Alcorn

“The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger.”

Poor Poverty Ignorance Weapons Hunger Ill Illness Hungry Sophisticated Arsenal Illiterate

Author:Fidel Castro

“I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.”

Writing Age Natural Poverty Despair Madness Ill Inevitable Enslavement Unattractive Meaninglessness Insignificance Uselessness Ill Health

Author:William Saroyan

“How do I change? 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.”