Top 100 Quotes About Being Poor
#1. Wisdom of the Ages: "Being Poor" Of all the crimes committed in America, undoubtedly the most unforgivable.
Matthew D. Heines
#2. It's okay to be proud of your good English. But don't be proud of being poor at your Mother tongue. Only the scum of the earth do that.
Manasa Rao
#3. Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.
Sherman Edwards
#4. You had to see yourself poor and think of yourself as being poor, or you never would have been poor.
Al Koran
#7. Stardom equals financial success and financial success equals security. I've spent too much of my life feeling insecure. I still have nightmares about being poor, of everything I own just vanishing away. Stardom means that can't happen.
Steve McQueen
#8. Being poor in Africa is something people in America can't relate to. Part of the challenge is bringing that reality to people and moving them. You have to arouse compassion.
Madonna Ciccone
#9. I did it to myself. It wasn't society ... it wasn't a pusher, it wasn't being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.
Ray Charles
#10. Not much. I never really spent anything. I've often wondered what being poor was like." "You're going to get a huge opportunity to find out." "Will I need training?" "It comes naturally," said Rincewind. "You pick it up as you go along.
Terry Pratchett
#11. I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.
Mike Todd
#12. You should never value people according to the size of their bank balances. Being poor does not make them bad and being rich does not make them good
Jackie Ballard
#13. Not being able to kiss someone was a lot like being poor. She tried not to dwell on the things she couldn't have.
Maggie Stiefvater
#14. Being poor is not like being a victim. Being poor means that you don't have one resource.
Kathy Calvin
#15. Still, I could not imagine how being poor could be worse than being rich and hating yourself. I had seen enough of what it was like to be dead. It was time to try living.
James Patrick Kelly
#17. Poor is a state of mind. Broke is a state of wallet. You can fix being broke; it's not so easy to fix being poor.
Ric Edelman
#18. It isn't the rich people's fault that poor people are poor. Poor people who get an education and work hard in this country will stop being poor. That should be the goal for all poor people everywhere.
Ben Stein
#19. That was the worst of being poor, you couldn't give the right things in sickness.
Ellen Glasgow
#20. He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.
Samuel Johnson
#21. In this night, pure and everlasting, like an old fairy tale, being Turkish felt infinitely better than being poor.
Orhan Pamuk
#23. Thou art most rich, being poor; Most choice, forsaken; and most lov'd, despis'd! Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon.
William Shakespeare
#24. The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.
Oscar Wilde
#25. Being poor, for example, reduces a person's cognitive capacity more than going one full night without sleep. It is not that the poor have less bandwidth as individuals. Rather, it is that the experience of poverty reduces anyone's bandwidth.
Sendhil Mullainathan
#26. Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it.
Fran Lebowitz
#27. Being poor is not an indication of potential or worth. It's a lack of resources.
Kim Harrison
#28. Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.
Jerome K. Jerome
#29. You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'
Sendhil Mullainathan
#30. There's something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches.
Ben Affleck
#31. You don't need magic to be invisible in a town like this. Being poor works just the same.
C.M. Hayden
#32. There is a difference between broke and being poor. Being broke is a temporary economic condition, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind and a depressed condition of your spirit, and you must vow to never, ever be poor again.
John Hope Bryant
#33. Education ... beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of conditions of men
the balance wheel of the social machinery ... It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich; it prevents being poor.
Horace Mann
#34. Being poor is a frame of mind.
Mike Todd
#35. Gipsies, who every ill can cure,
Except the ill of being poor
Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell,
Who can in hen-roost set a spell,
Prepar'd by arts, to them best known
To catch all feet except their own,
Who, as to fortune, can unlock it,
As easily as pick a pocket.
Charles Churchill
#36. That's what it's like being poor - choices are something you sit around and dream about having, some day after you strike it rich.
David Wong
#37. There is nothing wrong with being poor; but there is everything wrong with remaining poor after you have discovered your riches in Christ.
Chris Oyakhilome
#38. Being poor is a choice. People make decisions every day that decide whether they are fat or stupid or poor. It is not my responsibility to interfere in the lives people have chosen,
Sarah Noffke
#39. Taking all the round of professions and occupations, you will find that every man is the worse for being poor; and the doctor is a specially dangerous man when poor.
George Bernard Shaw
#40. NAUGHTY AND NICE? said Death. BUT IT'S EASY TO BE NICE IF YOU'RE RICH. IS THIS FAIR?
Albert wanted to argue. He wanted to say, Really? In that case, how come so many of the rich buggers is bastards? And being poor don't mean being naughty, neither.
Terry Pratchett
#41. I knew what it was like to be poor, and that once you had become rich, anything was better than being poor again.
Belinda Alexandra
#42. How often the rich like to play at being poor. A rather nasty game, I've always thought.
Lillian Hellman
#43. I'm scared to death of being poor. It's like a fat girl who loses 500 pounds but is always fat inside. I grew up poor and will always feel poor inside. It's my pet paranoia.
Cher
#44. Katie shook her head in dismay. "I thought being poor was the worst thing that could happen to a girl."
"No, Katie," the countess said in a clear voice. "The worst thing is to be in love with one man and have to marry another."
Katie O'Reilly to the Countess of Marbury in "Titanic Rhapsody
Jina Bacarr
#45. Part of the problem with a war on poverty today is that many Americans have decided that being poor is a character defect, not an economic condition.
Anna Quindlen
#46. We cannot continue to mourn about our country being poor while our minerals are lying untapped and with harvesting at Lake Natron, we will not be the first to do so, because our neighbours, Kenya, are doing the same on the other side of the lake.
Jakaya Kikwete
#47. No more apologies! So we're poor! All right, we're poor! This is America! And America is one place in this sorry world where people Shouldn't have to apologize for being poor. The question in America should be, 'Is this guy a good citizen? Is he honest? Does he pull his own weight?
Kurt Vonnegut
#48. Being 'poor in spirit' (a Christian virtue) means being detached from things - being able to possess goods without being possessed by them. It meansputting people ahead of possessions - and seeing material things only as instruments for serving God and the needs of others.
James Stenson
#49. Being poor in the Spirit means you are humble, gentle, meek, God-fearing,kind and exhibit the fruits of the Spirit but being Spiritually poor is lacking in every thing that pertains to life and godliness.
Jaachynma N.E. Agu
#50. Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.
Jane Austen
#51. I didn't get bullied any more than anybody else. I think I got bullied more for being poor than being gay. But no more than any other kid. And I'm sure that I did my fair share of picking on other kids, too. We're all humans.
Brandi Carlile
#52. I don't really believe in the myth of being poor but happy. At the poorest times in my life, I wasn't happy. I was just hungry.
Ali Liebegott
#53. I had a friend at college who took being poor very personally. He started showering in the sports centre next door and said he wasn't going to pay for the hot water in our flat any more because he didn't use it. He made me and my other friend pay the bills on our own.
Robert Webb
#54. Must do like one who, being poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers, and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#55. If there's one thing a goblin hates more than being poor, it's being dead.
Jamie Sedgwick
#56. Because the world itself is now unfathomable, the only complexities that really count are small moments of domestic life that combine to trigger deep emotion. There is no longer any way of being poor in any interesting way in major cities like Manhattan
Chris Kraus
#57. Being sick robs a person of their health and being poor robs them of life's luxuries, but being pitied robs them of their will to live.
Bette Lee Crosby
#58. The good thing about poverty is it keeps you from getting in trouble because if you can't afford drugs, people will stop giving them to you very quickly. So, being poor really helps - it's the success that kills you.
Tommy Chong
#59. In one important respect a man is fortunate in being poor. His responsibility to God is so much the less
Christian Nestell Bovee
#60. As kids we didn't complain about being poor; we talked about how rich we were going to be and made moves to get the lifestyle we aspired to by any means we could. And as soon as we had a little money, we were eager to show it.
Jay-Z
#62. Hard times don't necessarily mean being poor all the time. I've known people that was a part of a family and always feel that the family likes everybody else but them. That hurts and that's as deep a hurt as you can possibly get.
B.B. King
#63. There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
#64. Do not fret under such assistance as is needful; therein lies one great grace of poverty. It were overambitious to aim at being poor without suffering any inconvenience, in other words, to have the credit of poverty and the convenience of riches.
Saint Francis De Sales
#65. Jerome says (Ep. ad Nepot. lii): Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being a nobody has become a celebrity.
Thomas Aquinas
#66. The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
Willem De Kooning
#67. To be conscious of being poor while praying for riches is to be rewarded with that which you are conscious of being, namely, poverty. Prayers to be successful must be claimed and appropriated. Assume the positive consciousness of the thing desired.
Neville Goddard
#68. She had certainly learned about not having enough money, which is different from being poor.
Anna Quindlen
#69. I've never had to do anything I didn't believe in. Sometimes that meant being poor and waitressing a while longer, but I've always stuck with it.
Linda Kozlowski
#70. I'm proud that I've never stopped writing about being poor.
Eileen Myles
#71. I'm terrified of being poor, I always have been. It's growing up as a Methodist. I'll spend that bit of extra money to get a better seat on a train sometimes, because it's quieter and calmer, but I refuse to spend money on clothes.
Kevin McCloud
#72. SIR! SIR! SIR! FORGET THAT 'SIR' STUFF, WILL YOU? I'll bet if that were the president or governor or mayor or some rich son of a bitch, there would be doctors all over that room doing something! Why do you just let them die? What's the sin in being poor?
Charles Bukowski
#73. One thing my mom didn't want any of us to do was to cry or to complain about life. Every day and night, even when we didn't have much food, we would pray together. And that for me was a beautiful moment. The fact of being poor didn't really hurt me.
Riccardo Tisci
#74. That's one of the disadvantages of being poor, you don't dare kill anybody.
Rex Stout
#75. I wasn't afraid of being poor. I didn't want to live in a big house. I'm the perfect size for poetry. I can move around.
Eileen Myles
#76. Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.
Ajahn Chah
#77. I wasn't afraid of being poor; I rather took it for granted. I was good at getting by with very little. I couldn't imagine sacrificing my writing to anything else.
Marge Piercy
#78. I did not believe what I was told about being poor and black and female in Mississippi in 1954.
Oprah Winfrey
#79. As my father always says, there's no shame in being poor, but it can be damned inconvenient.
Christine Pope
#80. I don't think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there's some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything.
Emma Thompson
#81. It is a common condition of being poor ... you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them.
Rick Bragg
#82. In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.
Andrew Young
#83. Aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling. It's like the difference between being broke and being poor.
Townes Van Zandt
#84. We have inadvertently designed a system in which being good at what you do as a teacher is not formally rewarded, while being poor at what you do is seldom corrected nor penalized.
Elliot W. Eisner
#85. There's another advantage to being poor - a doctor will cure you faster.
Kin Hubbard
#86. Being poor sucks ... It's hard to figure out the secrets of the universe when you're trying to figure out where you and your girlfriend are going to sleep next month.
Antony Garrett Lisi
#87. Being broke is a temporary situation. Being poor is a state of mind.
Mike Todd
#88. Shun, as you would the plague, a cleric who from being poor has become wealthy, or who, from being nobody has become a celebrity.
St. Jerome
#89. It's a full-time job being homeless. It's a full-time job being poor.
John Connolly
#91. When he asked my grandmother if she would mind being poor, she said she would be happy just to have her daughter and himself: 'If you have love, even plain water is sweet.
Jung Chang
#92. Any deep harmony that might eventually govern them would not be the result of their having much in common - having anything, in fact, but their affection; and would really find its explanation in some sense, on the part of each, of being poor where the other was rich.
Henry James
#93. No matter where you're born in life or what the circumstances are when you're born, like your parents being poor or not connected to power, you have a chance in this country to go as far as your talent and your work will take you.
Marco Rubio
#94. We grew up very poor, and I hated being poor. I was the oldest of five kids, and I never got a pair of skates until I was nine. It was very difficult to get an education back then and play junior hockey.
Paul Henderson
#95. But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I lay them at your feet. Tread lightly, for you tread on my dreams.
John Keats
#96. Social media has changed the world forever. We're not going to go backwards. People are not going to accept being poor, accept being excluded anymore.
Jim Yong Kim
#97. The world does not have time to be with the poor, to learn with the poor, to listen to the poor. To listen to the poor is an exercise of great discipline, but such listening surely is what is required if charity is not to become a hatred of the poor for being poor.
Stanley Hauerwas
#98. Another good thing about being poor is that when you are seventy your children will not have you declared legally insane in order to gain control of your estate.
Woody Allen
#99. I could stand in the middle of Front Street shrieking like a banshee and nobody would notice me. You don't need magic to be invisible in a town like this. Being poor works just the same. So stand behind me and think quiet thoughts.
C.M. Hayden
#100. A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
W. H. Auden
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