Top 100 Quotes About Being Poor
#1. Our goals can only be achieved with a society that respects and equally protects the rights of every human being, old and young, rich and poor, regardless of gender, color, race, or creed. We must reject the initiation of violence by individuals or government as morally repugnant.
Ron Paul
#2. Wisdom of the Ages: "Being Poor" Of all the crimes committed in America, undoubtedly the most unforgivable.
Matthew D. Heines
#3. To see poor people, their benefits being cut, to see pensions of Americans who have worked like my father, all their lives, and taken away, to see the rich just accumulating more and more wealth. I mean, it seems to me that there has to be a point where you have to say, 'No, this has to stop.'
Henry Giroux
#4. Due to poor weather, low visibility and extreme winds, I was forced to make the decision to descend after receiving word that there was another week of the daunting weather around the corner. You just can't climb being blown off your feet!
Lonnie Dupre
#5. 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
#6. Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'
Edward Abbey
#7. we don't develop along these lines, we will have poor differentiation and a very fragile sense of self. We will feel overly anxious about being loved
Allen Berger
#8. I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.
Mother Teresa
#9. 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
#10. I feel like I grew up being babysat by a television, and all I ever wanted to do was be in movies, direct movies, make movies, but it took me a really long time to be honest with myself about it because my background is that my family was very poor.
Noel Wells
#12. You had to see yourself poor and think of yourself as being poor, or you never would have been poor.
Al Koran
#13. Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.
Dick Gregory
#14. I thought this couldn't happen in astronomy. Isn't celestial mechanics supposed to be an exact science? So we poor backward biologists were always being told.
Arthur C. Clarke
#15. Think about it: You're trying to raise cash to save an endangered animal. You've got orphaned pandas getting 3 trillion YouTube hits, and you've got seals being clubbed over the head by roughnecks. The money flows in. But what about the poor shark?
Stephen Rodrick
#16. Wealthy people are often criticized for being obsessed with money, but the truth is, it's the poor, working, and middle class that spend the most time thinking about it.
Steve Siebold
#17. I start to think, 'It's awful being too poor to even buy my own dress for homecoming.' But that's instantly swept away by another thought: 'I'm so lucky that someone cates enough to loan me a dress.
Margaret Peterson Haddix
#18. If we want to give poor people soap we must set out deliberately to give them luxuries. If we will not make them rich enough to be clean, then empathically we must do what we did with the saints. We must reverence them for being dirty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#20. Being too consumed in fear all the time will result in poor quality of life
Marie De France
#21. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair.
David Petraeus
#23. 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
#24. Being broke didn't seem so awful as it had yesterday, being broke but being at peace with the world.
("Don't Wait Up For Me Tonight")
Cornell Woolrich
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. One honest John Tompkins, a hedger & ditcher,
Although he was poor, did not want to be richer;
For all such vain wishes in him were prevented
By a fortunate habit of being contented.
Jane Taylor
#28. As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.
Harper Lee
#29. I like rap music. But bragging about being rich to poor people is really offensive. I want to hear a rap song about buying a Cy Twombly painting or dating a museum curator. I want to hear about that kind of rich.
John Waters
#30. I had a will to win that come from being raised poor.
Sam Huff
#31. I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.
Imogen Cunningham
#32. My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.
Lindsay Duncan
#33. Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty
the shame of being thought poor
it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.
William Cobbett
#34. Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty.
Gerald F. Lieberman
#35. Being Black and poor is, I think, radically different from being anything else and poor. Poor, to most Blacks, is a state of mind. Those who accept it are poor; those who struggle are middle class.
Nikki Giovanni
#37. Katie wondered for a moment if part of the reason so many of the young women she knew who had poor self-esteem ended up that way because they had spent their lives gazing at themselves in a mirror instead of being the mirror others gazed into.
Robin Jones Gunn
#38. 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
#39. If I were to say that I grew up in East Los Angeles in the projects poor, I assumed that everybody understood that it came with its own reasons for being the way I am. I didn't get that people needed to understand where my comedy came from; I thought that they knew that. Now I tell people.
Carlos Mencia
#40. No touching Baby Jesus."
"But we're his parents!" proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation.
"Mary Beth," Barb Wiggin said, "if you touch the Baby Jesus, I'm putting you in a cow costume.
John Irving
#41. I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.
Mike Todd
#42. 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
#43. I was just very interested in the American frontier and the growth of capitalism - those enormous fortunes that were being made, more often than not, on the blood of poor people, black people, Indian people. They were the ones who paid very dearly for those great fortunes.
Peter Matthiessen
#44. 99% of the casualties linked to climate change occur in developing countries. Worst hit are the world's poorest groups. While climate change will increasingly affect wealthy countries, the brunt of the impact is being borne by the poor, whose plight simply receives less attention.
Rajendra K. Pachauri
#45. All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?
Martin Luther King Jr.
#46. 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
#47. The profession of letters is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being ridiculous.
Jules Renard
#48. Being poor is not like being a victim. Being poor means that you don't have one resource.
Kathy Calvin
#49. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.
F Scott Fitzgerald
#50. 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
#51. Zebra babies can flat-out run within an hour of being born, because if they can't, they're dead. We were like zebras, so poor we didn't know how poor we were, and tough and independent because there wasn't any other way to be.
Willie Parker
#52. Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance; the distinctions of rich, and poor, may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh, ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice.
Thomas Paine
#53. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.
G.K. Chesterton
#54. I have always suspected everyone who likes me of having poor judgment. I despise them for being so easily taken in.
Jerzy Kosinski
#55. Close examination of the evidence shows that the poor were being included in private education, and only those who did not want to go to school were missing out. There was no need for public school except as a tool to undermine the church's influence in education.
Gregg Harris
#56. Poor thing. If she wasn't being thrown into trees or attacked by his kin, she was being mystically flung to the ground by his old, terrifying great-great-aunt.
It was really going to be impossible to talk to Braith in a rational, calm manner after all this.
G.A. Aiken
#58. Keep doing the right things in life. Keep your faith and joy during tough times. Difficulty means you are being prepared for takeoff on the runways of life ahead of you!
Timothy Pina
#59. I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him with
a stick he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse - haunted me for weeks.
Albert Schweitzer
#60. 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
#61. Let not the titles of consanguinity betray you into a prejudicial trust; no blood being apter to raise a fever, or cause a consumption sooner in your poor estate, than that which is nearest your own.
Frances Osborne
#62. To be poor without murmuring is difficult. To be rich without being proud is easy.
Confucius
#63. It's just being who you want to be, even if you are a poor kid making loud music
about being unhappy!
John Darnielle
#64. 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
#65. If I were to live in Africa, serving the poor, the number-one thing I'd miss wouldn't be running water or electricity - it would be style ... being able to get dressed up and feel beautiful.
Evangeline Lilly
#66. As you say, I am honoured and famous and rich. But as I have to do all the hard work, and suffer an increasing multitude of fools gladly, it does not feel any better than being reviled, infamous and poor, as I used to be.
George Bernard Shaw
#67. Boys, I have been rich and I have been poor, and believe me being rich is better.
Joe E. Lewis
#68. That was the worst of being poor, you couldn't give the right things in sickness.
Ellen Glasgow
#69. He that thinks he can afford to be negligent is not far from being poor.
Samuel Johnson
#70. You know I have loved him always.
But we are very poor.
Who, being loved, is poor? Oh, no one. I hate my riches. They are a burden ...
Oscar Wilde
#71. His conscience smote him. As smitings go, it wasn't much, his conscience being in poor fighting condition.
Loretta Chase
#72. In this night, pure and everlasting, like an old fairy tale, being Turkish felt infinitely better than being poor.
Orhan Pamuk
#73. That, when they shall be opened, black Macbeth Will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state (55) Esteem him as a lamb, being compared With my confineless harms.
William Shakespeare
#74. Friends, genuine friends, are attracted by a warm heart, not money, not power. A genuine friend considers you as just another human being, as a brother or sister, and shows affection on that level, regardless of whether you are rich or poor, or in a high position; that is a genuine friend.
Dalai Lama
#75. What I've found is that country doesn't refer to where you grew up as much as where your heart grows down, where it takes root. Country is a state of mind. I believe what ultimately defines being country is simple: a loving heart, a helping hand, an open mind, poor in spirit.
Clay Walker
#76. I overheard things in the Woolworths when I was a child, people saying, 'Oh, poor, little thing,' as if they had some understanding that I was being born biracial into a world that was still very difficult for interracial marriages and biracial children.
Natasha Trethewey
#77. Don't let a temporal way to connect be a poor substitute for an eternal way. Without first being connected vertically to God, all the social networking contacts in the world won't be enough.
Robert A. Schuller
#78. Effective teamwork will not take the place of knowing how to do the job or how to manage the work. Poor teamwork, however, can prevent effective final performance. And it can also prevent team members from gaining satisfaction in being a member of a team and the organization.
Robert Bales
#79. There was a contradiction within Vikas, an open wound: though he was fascinated by the poor, good at joshing with them, he was afraid, thanks to his bourgeois background, of being perceived as poor. Poverty equaled failure.
Karan Mahajan
#81. Don't let pain & heartaches and looking for better solutions in life ... STOP you from being happy! Enjoy loving life and every beautiful sunset it has to offer!
Timothy Pina
#82. It was much pleasanter at home," thought poor Alice, "when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn't gone down the rabbit-hole
and yet
and yet
...
Lewis Carroll
#83. 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
#84. I remember being told of a poor wretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost beside myself with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I would have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#85. Poor practices are blunting email marketing's effectiveness and keeping its ROI from being truly awesome.
Chad White
#86. I will never tire of repeating this: what the poor need the most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being.
Mother Teresa
#87. The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance.
Oscar Wilde
#88. When people say, "Don't just sit there, do something," they're urging you to act. But if the quality of your being is poor - if you don't have enough peace, understanding, and equanimity, if you still have a lot of anger and worries - then your actions will also be poor.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. If you have no love, do what you will - go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems - you are a dead human being. Without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly.
Carl Jung
#92. Being poor is not an indication of potential or worth. It's a lack of resources.
Kim Harrison
#93. You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?'
Peter Kropotkin
#94. It was an instinctive testimony to Little Dorrit's worth and difference from all the rest, that the poor young fellow honoured and loved her for being simply what she was.
Charles Dickens
#95. We were totally unprepared for such a large quantity of visitors, and in view of the preservation of the antiquities they being very crowded and in poor preservation, we were obliged to refuse admission until some preparation was made to safeguard the objects.
Howard Carter
#96. Being a common laborer all my life at poor and underpaid jobs, I had worked with more black men, known more black men, drank with more black men, fought with more black men than any theoretical liberal with books jammed between the ears.
Charles Bukowski
#97. I never dreamt of being in the movies. I was from a very average, I would say, a rather poor family, so my big treat was to work hard all week - I mowed lawns and babysat and washed dishes and washed cars - to go to the movies.
Debbie Reynolds
#98. The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.
Tim Berners-Lee
#99. I was from a poor Jewish family in the South Bronx. My father was a plumber, but when I was 16, he got sick and I had to take over. Being a plumber in the South Bronx wasn't fun.
Leonard Susskind
#100. How's our blue rose?" the doctor asked.
...
"If you really want to know, I feel sorry for the poor thing," Elinor went on. "All wrapped up that way. I'm starting to think there's no point in being a rose if you're tied up and covered with burlap.
Alice Hoffman
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