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Poverty Quotes

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Poverty Quotes

“Poverty is a divine stepmother who does for youths what their own mothers were unable to do. It introduces them to frugality, to the world and to life.”

World Doe Mother Poverty Youth Divine Introducing Frugality Stepmothers

Author:Honore de Balzac

“In my youth, poverty enriched me, but now I can afford wealth.”

I Can Wealth Poverty Youth Adversity Prosperity

Author:Marc Chagall

“Great is Youth--equally great is Old Age--great are Day and Night. Great is Wealth--great is Poverty--great is Expression-great is Silence.”

Age Night Wealth Silence Poverty Youth Greatness Expression Old Age Day And Night

Book:Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition

Source: Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition

“Youth gives a sense of new days dawning bright, going on for ever, and a kind of tamped-down excitement which keeps breaking through even the worst days of poverty, depression and loneliness. But then youth is something which only exists in retrospect; you are barely conscious of it while you have it.”

Giving Kind Poverty Worst Loneliness Youth Conscious Excitement New Day Retrospect Worst Day

Author:Fay Weldon

“You, that have toiled during youth, to set your son upon higher ground, and to enable him to begin where you left off, do not expect that son to be what you were, - diligent, modest, active, simple in his tastes, fertile in resources. You have put him under quite a different master. Poverty educated you; wealth will educate him. You cannot suppose the result will be the same.”

Source: Anna Letitia Barbauld: Selected Poetry and Prose

“At last I came to college. I rushed for it with the outstretched arms of youth's aching hunger to give and take of life's deepest, and highest, and I came against the solid wall of the well-fed, well-dressed world - the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness. ... How I pinched, and scraped, and starved myself, to save enough to come to college! Every cent of the tuition fee I paid was drops of sweat and blood from underpaid laundry work. And what did I get for it? A crushed spirit, a broken heart, a stinging sense of poverty that I never felt before.”

“... what's been building since the 1980's is a new kind of social Darwinism that blames poverty and crime and the crisis of our youth on a breakdown of the family. That's what will last after this flurry on family values.”

Kind Lasts Values Politics Social Family Poverty Crime Youth Building Crisis Blame Breakdown Darwinism Family Values Social Darwinism

Author:Stephanie Coontz

“A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.”

“We would never throw up our hands and say to those white boys - well, too bad, if you had just stayed away from marijuana or not dealt dope to your friends when you were 18 you wouldn't be serving a life sentence in prison right now. You wouldn't be locked out of jobs, unable to even get work at McDonalds. No, instead we'd say, "What's wrong with us as a nation that we would condemn so many of our young men to a life of poverty, exclusion, and scorn simply because they made a few mistakes in their youth?".”

Ifs Men Wells Made Hands Jobs Young Nations White Mistake Boys Poverty Youth Right Now Prison Sentences Young Man Serving Marijuana Locked Scorn Dope Exclusion Mcdonalds

Author:Michelle Alexander

“We need to create jobs for 300,000 youth graduating from high school in the next three years. We need to produce growth so we can have an economic system that can turn our natural wealth into a productive system. We need services, because poverty reduction cannot take place without effective citizenship.”

School Growth Natural Wealth Poverty Economic Youth High School Productive Graduates Citizenship

Author:Ashraf Ghani

“True friendship is worth more than can be measured, a quality forever to be treasured. True friends will staunchly stand beside each other, as loyally brother shieldeth brother, remaining firm in spite of war and strife, in poverty or sickness, throughout life. True friendship doth endure while comrades age from boy to youth, from warrior to sage.”

War Age Quality Boys Poverty Forever Youth Brother Endure Warrior Firm Spite Sickness Strife Sage True Friend True Friendship Comrade True Life Treasured

Author:Cecilia Dart-Thornton