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Slums Quotes

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Slums Quotes

“The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.”

PovertyDespairEnglandHopelessness1930sSlumsSocial ClassPlumbingTrains
Book:The Road to Wigan Pier
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“With no small amount of trepidation, we walked alone past a colony of black-faced monkeys we’d been told were extremely dangerous. We avoided eye contact and certainly didn’t take pictures. And dearly wished our old Sherpa bag-carrying matey was nearby. We visited Gandhi’s tomb. We saw saris being printed and hand-knotted carpets being fabricated and negotiated a decent price for a small hand-crafted rug of Mughal design that, as long as we keep the certificate of authenticity safe, should appreciated in value. We witnessed poverty beyond poverty, with ‘untouchables’ so poor that they are actually outside the caste system, and who can’t even afford to live in the unsanitary slums described as 'unfit for human habitation.”

PovertyIndiaMonkeysGandhiSlumsCaste SystemMughals Of IndiaMughal
Book:Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe
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“And I saw the roof of the shack in Hanoi where my mother lived. Sheet metal patched together with tar paper. On rainy days, the roof leaked. In the heat of summer, the acrid smell of tar was overpowering, nauseating. All around, the gutters, gurgling under slabs of cement, flowed from one house to the next. Children played in this filthy black water, sailing their little white paper boats. The few mangy patches of grass were at the foot of the wall where men drunk on too much beer came to relieve themselves. The place reeked of urine. This was my street. I had grown up here.”

PovertyVietnamSlums
Book:Paradise of the Blind
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“I was spending a lot of time in Mumbai after I met my husband, who is Indian, and while parts of the city were prospering like crazy, I couldn't quite make out how the new wealth had changed the prospects of the majority of city residents who lived in slums. So after a few years I stopped wondering and started reporting.”

YearsWealthCitiesWonderCrazyChangedMetsHusbandMajoritySpendingIndianMy HusbandProspectsResidentsMake OutSlumsMumbaiProspering
Author:Katherine Boo
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“Go into the streets, into the slums, into the fashionable quarters. Go into the day courts and the night courts. Become acquainted with sorrow, with many kinds of sorrow. Learn of the wonderful heroism of the poor, of the incredible generosity of the very poor”

KindNightPoorWonderfulStreetsSorrowCourtIncrediblesGenerosityQuartersHeroismFashionableSlumsNight Court
Book:Mrs. Fiske: Her Views on Actors, Acting, and the Problems of Production
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“I have committed myself to joy. I have come to realize that those who make space for joy, those who prefer nothing to joy, those who desire the utter reality, will most assuredly have it. We must not be afraid to announce it to refugees, slum dwellers, saddened prisoners, angry prophets. Now and then we must even announce it to ourselves. In this prison of now, in this cynical and sophisticated age, someone must believe in joy.”

BelieveRealityAgeJoyDesireRealizingSpaceAngryPrisonCommittedProphetPrisonerCynicalNow And ThenSophisticatedRefugeeSlumsSaddenedDwellers
Author:Richard Rohr
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“London is like the tropical bush -- if you don't exercise constant care the jungle, in the shape of the slums, will break in.”

IfsCareBreakExerciseShapesConstantLondonJungleSlumsTropical
Book:The Complete Works of John Buchan (Unabridged): Thriller Classics, Spy Novels, Supernatural Tales, Short Stories, Poetry, Historical Works, The Great War Writings, Essays, Biographies & Memoirs – All in One Volume
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“Except for its worst inner-city slums, America is not the primitive capitalist jungle of European imagination, where human beings slink away like wounded animals to die in bloodstained holes.”

HumansAmericaDiesImaginationHuman BeingsAnimalCitiesWorstHolesCapitalistPrimitiveWoundedJungleSlumsInner CityWounded Animal
Book:Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West
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“The very word "change" has changed. When I was young--and not just because I was young--we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planned, controlled, beneficent change would continue to clear slums, sweep up the remains of empire, raise living and educational standards, tidy away--firmly but kindly--the last aboriginals who still raved about martial glory or the pride of wealth. Now, as it seems to me, change is set almost exclusively in the minor key, change seen overwhelmingly as loss.”

StillsSeemsLastsYoungChangeWealthLossClearChangedPrideKeysGloryStandardsRaisesRemainsEducationalEmpiresControlledMinorsImpatienceTidySlumsAboriginal
Book:Games with Shadows
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“The average ordinary person, in the worst slums of America, someone who might even hate the law and disagree with the government, they would do something about that [abandoned child]. But in Afghanistan, people hardly have the means to take care of themselves, let alone a random child on the street.”

PeopleMeanChildrenPersonsGovernmentMightCareAmericaLawHateStreetsWorstOrdinaryAverageTake CareDisagreeAfghanistanAbandonedSlumsOrdinary Person
Author:Immortal Technique
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“In every conversation I've had - with housewives in Mumbai, with middle-class people, upper-class, in the slums - everyone says there is an underlying consciousness of karma. That people believe in karma - that what you're putting out is going to come back. If I do something to you, the energy of it is going to come back to me in the future.”

PeopleIfsBelieveEnergyConsciousnessClassMiddleConversationKarmaMiddle ClassHousewifeSlumsUpper ClassMumbaiCome Back To Me
Author:Deepak Chopra
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“We're capable of understanding that someone has to drop an atomic bomb on a town of innocent civilians, but not that others have to cut up prostitutes who spread disease and moral depravity in the slums of London. Hence we call the former realism and the latter madness.”

UnderstandingMoralCuttingDiseaseCapableMadnessTownsSpreadLondonInnocentFormerBombsLatterRealismCiviliansAtomic BombDepravitySlumsMoral Depravity
Book:The Snowman: Harry Hole 7
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“Of course we will continue to work for cheaper electricity in the homes and on the farms of America; for better and cheaper transportation; for low interest rates; for sounder home financing; for better banking; for the regulation of security issues; for reciprocal trade among nations and for the wiping out of slums. And my friends, for all of these we have only begun to fight.”

HomeGovernmentAmericaFightingCoursesNationsInterestIssuesSecurityLowsMy FriendsTradeRateReformFarmsRegulationElectricityBankingTransportationCheaperInterest RateFinancingSlumsReciprocalSounderWiping Out
Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt
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“One of the saddest sights of the slums is to see the thrifty wife of the working man, with her rosy brood of children, used to country air and sunshine, used to space, privacy, good surroundings, cleanliness, quiet, shut up amid the noise and dirt and confusion, in the gloom of the slum.”

MenChildrenCountryUsedSpaceWifeAirQuietSightNoiseConfusionPrivacySunshineDirtShut UpSurroundingsGloomCleanlinessSaddestCity LifeSlumsRosyWorking ManThriftyRural Life
Book:Beauty for Ashes, by Albion Fellows Bacon; with Numerous Illustrations
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