Home / Topics / Poverty Quotes

Poverty Quotes

Browse 6296 quotes about Poverty.

Poverty Quotes

“Poverty when coupled with creativeness is usually free of frustration. This is true of the poor artisan skilled in his trade and of the poor writer, artist, and scientist in the full possession of creative powers. Nothing so bolsters our self-confidence and reconciles us with ourselves as the continuous ability to create; to see things grow and develop under our hand, day in, day out. The decline of handicrafts in modern times is perhaps one of the causes for the rise of frustration and the increased susceptibility of the individual to mass movements.”

Source: THE TRUE BELIEVER

“Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers. One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.”

“Much of the image of the amazingness of America comes from the movies into other cultures. And it's much the same thing when you reverse it. Much of Africa is presented through poverty, through drought and war. [But] you're not presenting people, you're not presenting countries, you're not presenting complexity, and so people can't care about an amorphous mass called Africa.”

People War Country Care America Culture Poverty Mass Complexity Reverse Presenting Drought Other Cultures

Author:Chris Abani

“The primary cause of disorder and lawlessness today, as throughout history, is the poverty of the many in contrast to the affluence of the few. But a new element of unrest has been added: a growing awareness that mass poverty is caused by defective institutions that prevent our harnessing the physical capabilities of science, engineering, management and labor to create general affluence; in other words, a growing awareness that poverty in any country that is or can be industrialized, is man's not nature's fault.”

“How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.”

Government Political Party Poverty Mass Illusion Consequence Program Responsible Welfare Convince Someday Political Parties Notorious Alleviate

Book:You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You

Source: You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You

“We know there are no weapons of mass destruction. But there are weapons of misdirection. Millions without health insurance, poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor.”

Knows War Poor Poverty Millions Weapons Mass Destruction Billions Weapons Of Mass Destruction Mass Destruction Misdirection

Author:Joseph Lowery

“Our [Virginia's] act for freedom of religion is extremely applauded. The Ambassadors and ministers of the several nations of Europe resident at this court have asked me copies of it to send to their sovereigns, and it is inserted at full length in several books now in the press; among others, in the new Encyclopédie. I think it will produce considerable good even in those countries where ignorance, superstition, poverty and oppression of body and mind in every form, are so firmly settled on the mass of the people, that their redemption from them can never be hoped.”

Source: Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson

“What kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work - and masses of unemployed?”

People Ifs Kind Values Poverty Mass Capitalism Paid Unemployed

Author:Andy Grove

“In the current economic situation, the temptation for the more dynamic economies is that of chasing after advantageous alliances that, nevertheless, can have harmful effects for poorer states, prolonging situations of extreme mass poverty of men and women and using up the earth's natural resources, entrusted to man by God the Creator-as Genesis says-that he might cultivate and protect it.”

“It is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.”

Facts Poverty Media Mass Misery Everyday Plenty Everyday Life Torment Deprivation Affluence Mass Media

Book:The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr

Source: The Wisdom of Martin Luther King, Jr

“Meaningful solutions to the problems of mass poverty that prevails in India I believe can only be found in the framework of an expanding economy.”

Believe Problem Found I Believe Poverty Economy Mass Solutions India Meaningful Expanding Framework

Author:Manmohan Singh

“For children, the era of mass incarceration has meant a tremendous amount of family separation, broken homes, poverty, and a far, far greater level of hopelessness as they see so many of their loved ones cycling in and out of prison. Children who have incarcerated parents are far more likely themselves to be incarcerated.”

Children Home Parent Levels Poverty Greater Broken Amount Mass Prison Separation Eras Loved Ones Hopelessness Cycling Incarceration Mass Incarceration Broken Homes

Author:Michelle Alexander

“Care work is still primarily done by women for free in families and for poverty wages in the market, and this is a major reason that worldwide women are the mass of the poor and the poorest of the poor.”

Stills Reason Done Care Poor Poverty Majors Mass Wages Poorest

Author:Riane Eisler

“We have weapons of mass destruction we have to address here at home. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction.”

Home Poverty Economy Health Weapons Mass Economics Destruction Addresses Unemployment Homelessness Weapons Of Mass Destruction Mass Destruction

Author:Dennis Kucinich

“For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

Source: Animal Farm and 1984

“Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] ... by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks ... to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.”

Men Needs Individual Interest Wealth Poverty Mass Standards Capitalism Raises Privilege Socialism Preserves Liberalism Enterprise Rescue Minimum Preference Monopoly Raise Up

Author:Winston Churchill

“It's obsequious little nicety-nice girls like me who allow assholes to run the world: Miss Harlot O'Harlots, billionaire phony tree huggers, hypocrite drug-snorting, weed-puffing peace activists who fund the mass-murdering drug cartels and perpetuate crushing poverty in dirt-poor banana republics. It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities.”