American Poverty Quotes

#1. One of the things that struck me when I came to the U.S. was discovering American poverty.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#2. The psychological pain
and the ethical shame
of American poverty are made greater by the fact that this country possesses the wealth and the energy to raise all children to a minimally decent standard of living.

Kenneth Keniston

#3. I think one of the most important American films is 'Jackie Brown,' which is such a humble depiction of humble characters but so powerful. The film was pure depiction of the American poverty of the '90s.

Arnaud Desplechin

#4. I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#5. I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31.

Dustin Hoffman

#6. There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It's because America has such an ideology of success.

Will Self

#7. A variant of the NIT puts it within our power to end poverty, provide for comfortable retirement and medical care for everyone, and - as a bonus that is probably more important than any of the immediate effects - revitalize American civil society.

Charles Murray

#8. I believe the war on poverty is a more American idea than the war on the war on poverty. I believe that most people feel like that. And I believe that it ain't over till it's over.

Bruce Springsteen

#9. Poverty is a relatively mild disease for even a very flimsy American soul, but uselessness will kill strong and weak souls alike, and kill every time.

Kurt Vonnegut

#10. The vast majority of Americans, at all coordinates of the economic spectrum, consider themselves middle class; this is a deeply ingrained, distinctly American cognitive dissonance.

Ellen Cushing

#11. Our aid is work for the American people.

Rajiv Shah

#12. I'm very pro-American - my entire family escaped poverty in Italy because they rightly believed in the American dream.

Camille Paglia

#13. The native American has been generally despised by his white conquerors for his poverty and simplicity.

Charles Eastman

#14. We've got to do more to ensure that people who work full time are not living in poverty and that the massive gap between rich and poor - which is fundamentally un-American, as far as I'm concerned - is somehow dealt with.

Eric Schneiderman

#15. I agree with President Roosevelt, and generations since, that American seniors deserve better than poverty.

Hank Johnson

#16. Social Security is one of the greatest achievements of the American government, protecting our elderly against poverty and assuring young people of a more secure future.

Mark Foley

#17. The American people have this to learn: that where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither person nor property is safe.

Frederick Douglass

#18. First we have to recognize that the cause of poverty is both structural and behavioral. And the first thing about the behavior part is that we need a moral revolution within the African American community. Look - no white racist makes you get pregnant when you are a black teenager.

Henry Louis Gates

#19. I have committed my life to helping the poor, and I believe that if more companies followed Wal-Mart's lead in providing opportunity and savings to those who need it most, more Americans battling poverty would realize the American dream.

Andrew Young

#20. cross-national studies show that the U.S. poverty rate, which stands persistently above 12 percent, is not only the highest poverty rate of any advanced industrial nation, but is more than twice the average for that group.
Pursuing the American Dream, 9, 276

Calvin C. Jillson

#21. Poverty is not the stepchild of the Great Recession; poverty has always been a part of American life.

Tavis Smiley

#22. Medicare is paid for by the American taxpayer. Medicare belongs to you. Medicare is for seniors, who many of them are on fixed income, to lift them out of poverty.

John F. Kerry

#23. They didn't need to be specifically South American or Latin American. Instead we discovered we were talking about human beings in general. We realized that these are not issues only pertinent to Latin America: poverty, misery, consumerism, etc.

Alex Abreu

#24. Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream. And our current government programs, offer at best only a partial solution. They help people deal with poverty, but they do not help them escape it.

Marco Rubio

#25. A peculiarity of the American historical sensibility allows us to be proud of great-grandfathers (or even grandfathers) who lived in crushing poverty, while the poverty of a father is too close for comfort.

Patricia Hampl

#26. A society is judged by the way it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. As an American, I am ashamed that we have turned out backs on millions of our children. I want to do my part to rectify this terrible situation.

Marlo Thomas

#27. Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

Alden Nowlan

#28. 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.

Molly Ivins

#29. It takes intelligence and training, self-discipline and fine-sensibility, to gain renewed life through leisure occupation. America now suffers spiritual poverty, and art must become more fully American life before her leisure can become culture.

Hans Hofmann

#30. Global poverty is the product of reversible policy failures overseen by politicians, past and present. The poorest of the poor don't vote in American or European elections. They don't make donations to political parties or hire lobbyists in D.C., London or Canberra.

Hugh Evans

#31. If you want a future of shared prosperity, where the middle class is growing and poverty is declining, where the American Dream is alive and well, and where the United States remains the leading force for peace and prosperity in a highly competitive world, you should vote for Barack Obama.

William J. Clinton

#32. The theatrical performance of politicians who profess to speak for an "American People" do nothing to highlight the history of poverty.

Nancy Isenberg

#33. Cuba's poverty is caused by the crackpot Marxist doctrines imposed by its sociopathic ruler and promoted by half the liberal arts professors on American faculties.

David Horowitz

#34. Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#35. The plight of the terrified Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border to escape violence and poverty in their homelands has launched a passionate and often bitter debate in Washington.

Oscar Arias

#36. Since Social Security was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 to ensure economic security for American workers, poverty among American seniors has dramatically declined.

Steve Israel

#37. Over one in five American children is living in poverty, and the number is rising.

Eric Alterman

#38. The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain.

Roberto Bolano

#39. One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad.

Nicholas D. Kristof

#40. Without Social Security, poverty rates for African American seniors would more than double.

Chaka Fattah

#41. The operators were bound together by what they were running from - poverty in all its forms, despair, hunger, decimated families - as well as what they hoped to gain. Their imaginations were filled with American treasures:

Adriana Trigiani