Quotes About Poor Countries

#1. ...the road, rail, and port systems are so bad that poor countries cannot develop the scale of operations necessary to achieve high productivity.

William W. Lewis

#2. The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.

Lester R. Brown

#3. Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development?

Eduardo Galeano

#4. Nature herself in times of great poverty or bad climatic conditions, as well as poor harvest, intervenes to restrict the increase of population of certain countries or races; this, to be sure, by a method as wise as it is ruthless.

Thomas Malthus

#5. Countries are poor not because their people are lazy; their people are 'lazy' because they are poor.

Ha-Joon Chang

#6. I have the most eclectic audience - I've got gay, I've got straight, black, white, rich, poor, young, old, in 45 countries. And they don't all come because I'm the Sinatra kid, though that's a big part of it. My biggest successes have come from pop songs that I write myself.

Michael Buble

#7. Consistently rated the most peaceable of all countries in the world by the Global Peace Index, Iceland has reduced its military expenditure to zero, has no armed forces, and has reduced the inequality gap between rich and poor.

Scilla Elworthy

#8. Charities are now working to give people in poor countries access to the Internet. But shouldn't we spend that money on providing health clinics and safe water? Aren't these things more relevant? I have no intention of downplaying the importance of the Internet, but its impact has been exaggerated.

Ha-Joon Chang

#9. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country ... expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.

Theodor Herzl

#10. Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country and giving it to the rich people of a poor country.

Ron Paul

#11. The rate of profit ... is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.

Adam Smith

#12. It's not funny at all that we do all that advertising for children. Why is advertising for children allowed? What possible reason can there be for having those effing adverts on TV for all this crap that's made by poor people in poor countries that we sell our children who have too much?

Emma Thompson

#13. I don't have to look far and wide to discover that material wealth alone is not enough to build a great nation. There are many countries in the world, especially in developing countries of Africa, Asia and South America that are enormously wealthy in natural resources and yet have a poor population.

Sunday Adelaja

#14. Writers are writing in every corner of the globe.
Writers are writing, moreover, in rich countries and poor countries alike.

Minae Mizumura

#15. 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

#16. We should not go to the [poor countries] and say: 'We come to ... teach you our science, to show you your errors.' ... We should go instead with an inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn [from] these people.

Che Guevara

#17. Fundamentalism is not bred in poverty. There are plenty of poor countries in the world that don't have violence because amid the poverty there is a kind of justice and in some countries a democracy.

Robert Fisk

#18. Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually their lot and what would be desirable, while in the poor countries large masses of people seem to be satisfied by merely surviving.

Gunnar Myrdal

#19. All rich countries now employ legions of functionaries whose primary function is to make poor people feel bad about themselves.

David Graeber

#20. The invention of the micro-loan was a big surprise to me. Who would have guessed loans of less than $20 made to poor people in undeveloped countries could create thriving local economies? And, even more surprisingly, that they more reliably pay off their debts than the wealthy of the world.

Joel A. Barker

#21. Funding from rich countries to help the poor and vulnerable adapt to climate change is not even one percent of what is needed. This glaring injustice must be addressed at Copenhagen in December .

Barbara Stocking

#22. Look at other countries that have tried to have federally controlled health care. They have poor-quality health care. Our health-care system is the envy of the world because we believe in making sure that the decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by officials in the nation's capital.

George W. Bush

#23. School feeding not only fills stomachs, but has a proven track record of boosting enrollment, attendance and academic performance. For just pennies a day per child, this program changes lives - and ultimately can impact the futures of poor countries around the world in a profound way.

Drew Barrymore

#24. In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#25. My father's music gives hope to people and also inspires them to break the bonds of injustice and to be positive in life. I've seen that everywhere I go, especially in poor countries and poor neighborhoods.

Ziggy Marley

#26. Yes, writers are writing in all corners of the world. Yes they are writing in countries rich and poor. Yes, they are writing despite threats to their freedom of speech or even to their very lives. . . . everywhere on earth writers were writing in their own language.

Minae Mizumura

#27. Every Christian in America has some minimal responsibility to get involved in helping the poor brethren in the church in other countries.

K.P. Yohannan

#28. This is so rich a country that luxury has developed at the expense of necessities, and even the destitute partake of the luxury. We are the rich country of the world, like Dives at the feast. We must try hard, we must study to be poor like Lazarus at the gate, who was taken into Abraham's bosom.

Dorothy Day

#29. A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.

Wilbur Smith

#30. The more time I spent in developing countries, and the more time I spent talking to poor people, I realized what they want more than anything is a good job.

Leila Janah

#31. Poor countries are poor because they are wasting their resources.

Iqbal Quadir

#32. What if evangelical mega churches became known around the world for things like providing water access for entire countries or fighting to end the AIDS pandemic? Imagine what integrity that would give to the good news we preach, especially the gospel that Jesus declares is good news to the poor.

Shane Claiborne

#33. I don't see why OPEC countries should continue to cut production just to keep the price of oil high. This will not affect the industrial countries alone, it will also hit poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Who will look after them?

Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani

#34. People from the world's richest countries should be prepared to accept the burden of debt reduction for heavily indebted poor countries, and should urge their leaders to fulfill the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by the year 2015.

Pope Benedict XVI

#35. The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and poor countries of the world.

Kwame Nkrumah

#36. One of the most damaging myths of our time is that poor countries live in poverty because of a conspiracy of the rich countries, who arrange things so as to keep them underdeveloped, in order to exploit them.

Mario Vargas-Llosa

#37. If you withdraw the incredible focus on polio, it will spread back, and in poor countries you'll get something like 100,000 cases a year. So by being very intense and getting the cases down to zero, what you do is you avoid all the future cases.

Bill Gates

#38. In our day, this global offensive plays a well-defines role. Its aim is to justify te very unequal income distribution between countries and social elates, to convince the poor that poverty is the result of the children they don't avoid having, and to dam the rebellious advance of the masses.

Eduardo Galeano

#39. It is more difficult to fight poverty in a rich country than in a poor one.

Mother Teresa

#40. In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

Adam Davidson

#41. Rich countries have been sending aid to poor countries for the last 60 years. And, by and large, this has failed.

Iqbal Quadir

#42. In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

Bill Gates

#43. Most problems in poor countries are locally generated even though international factors do play a role.

Andrew Mwenda

#44. Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.

William J. Clinton

#45. You cannot contract to sell a baby. If they legalize this contract they may soon start bringing poor women in from other countries just to be breeders.

Mary Beth Whitehead

#46. In many Latin American countries, the historic ties of Catholic bishops with the political elite rendered them less sensitive to the conditions of the poor and especially of indigenous people.

Moises Naim

#47. I used to work for the World Health Organisation in poor countries all over the world - Bangladesh, Korea, the Philippines and India. You learn a whole range of things about how other people are living and try to connect with them to gain an understanding of where they're coming from.

Robert Winston

#48. Desperation is a fact of life in many poor, overcrowded countries.

Anthony Lewis

#49. If the U.S. wants to help people in tsunami-hit countries like Sri Lanka and Indonesia - not to mention other poor countries in Africa - there's one step that would cost us nothing and would save hundreds of thousands of lives. It would be to allow DDT in malaria-ravaged countries.

Nicholas D. Kristof

#50. Using money in one's attempt to put an end to poverty is like using a border in one's attempt to put an end to xenophobia.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#51. Sport is how poor kids from poor countries pass through the eye of the needle to riches and recognition.

A.A. Gill

#52. What is the Obama Doctrine? It seems to be one of disengagement, to try to ignore the hot, religious, dry, poor countries from Algeria to Pakistan.

Richard Engel

#53. If poverty is not a result of lack of resources or opportunities, but of poor institutions, poor government, and toxic politics, giving money to poor countries - particularly giving money to the governments of poor countries - is likely to perpetuate and prolong poverty, not eliminate it. The

Angus Deaton

#54. Since the gap between the rich countries and the poor can be removed, it will be. If we are shortsighted, inept, incapable either of good-will or enlightened self-interest, then it may be removed to the accompaniment of war and starvation: but removed it will be. The questions are, how, and by whom.

C.P. Snow

#55. Most poor people live in the poorest countries.

Bill Gates

#56. Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.

Desmond Tutu

#57. Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor.

Ha-Joon Chang

#58. Rich countries have 'kicked away the ladder' by forcing free-market, free-trade policies on poor countries. Already established countries do not want more competitors emerging through the nationalistic policies they themselves successfully used in the past.

Ha-Joon Chang

#59. The main difference lies in wage levels, which is because our workers are not yet as well trained as in other countries. We are a poor country. This is why we must accept the conditions that prevail in international markets. But our trade unions do represent the rights of workers.

Nguyen Minh Triet

#60. It is extremely important that mass media, having freed from the relics of the Cold War, served for peace and dialogue between nations and religions, the rich and the poor, countries and continents.

Nursultan Nazarbayev

#61. People who live in poor countries have to be entrepreneurial even just to survive.

Ha-Joon Chang

#62. In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.

Margaret Thatcher

#63. The wider the spread between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the worse the social problems: a statement which appears to be true for rich and poor countries alike. What matters is not how affluent a country is but how unequal it is.

Tony Judt

#64. I've been studying how quickly we can get energy out to the poor countries - a lot of which are in Africa - and how little progress we've made there. There's no more electricity today in sub-Saharan Africa per person than there was 20 years ago.

Bill Gates

#65. In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there. We have 300 million poor in India.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

#66. I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

William J. Clinton

#67. There always seem to be very rich people, no matter how poor the country, Thenoclon said.

Andrew Ashling

#68. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

James Shikwati

#69. I believe that we are at or near the apex of a great civilization ... In 50-100 years, if we're a poor third to some countries in Asia, I wouldn't be surprised. If I had to bet, the part of the world that will do best will be Asia.

Charlie Munger

#70. Foreign aid has been perfected so that it subsidizes corporate U.S. agriculture while preventing poor countries from developing profitable agriculture or feeding themselves.

Nicholas Von Hoffman

#71. Human dignity is independent of national borders. We must always defend the interests of the poor and the persecuted in other countries.

Kjell Magne Bondevik

#72. The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#73. When people move from poor countries to America, they quickly adapt in at least one way - their consumption habits.

Gary Bauer

#74. The shock caused by the September 11 events has also lead to a thorough reflection on the existing disparity between rich and poor countries, on the misery of populations of the South.

Omar Bongo

#75. I think the point about ActionAid is what it's asking people to do is engage with poor people in developing countries and understand what their lives are like and understand how the way we live our lives impacts on theirs.

Emma Thompson

#76. All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

Desmond Tutu

#77. Extreme weather events continue to grow more frequent and intense in rich and poor countries alike, not only devastating lives, but also infrastructure, institutions, and budgets - an unholy brew which can create dangerous security vacuums.

Ban Ki-moon

#78. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy.

Vladimir Putin

#79. Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by Governments lacking courage and vision.

Gunnar Myrdal

#80. We in the West must bear in mind that the poor countries are poor primarily because we have exploited them through political or economic colonialism.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#81. Countries, therefore, when lawmaking falls exclusively to the lot of the poor cannot hope for much economy in public expenditure; expenses will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot touch those who vote for them or because they are assessed in a way to prevent that.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#82. Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.

Nicholas D. Kristof

#83. The UK has a poor investment record. According to IMF data, we have come seventh out of the top seven industrialised countries since 1999.

Frances O'Grady

#84. If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

Bill Gates

#85. By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.

Bill Gates

#86. One of the best ways countries can combat poverty is to use development assistance to promote a growing private sector, in which the poor can fully participate.

John Danilovich

#87. It wouldn't cost too much to change the rules of trade so that poor countries can work their way out of poverty. But the world's leaders won't act unless they hear enough people telling them. And every day they fail to act, thousands of people die because they can't afford the basics of survival.

Edward De Bono

#88. But isn't it time for Christians to admit that we should reject bargains if they are gained by the exploitation of the poorest of the poor in developing countries?

Tony Campolo

#89. Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.

Bill Gates

#90. The capitalist "head office" can allow itself the luxury of creating
and believing its own myths of opulence, but the poor countries on the
capitalist periphery know that myths cannot be eaten.

Eduardo Galeano

#91. Foreign aid goes from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

Rand Paul

#92. We say the United States is a rich country, but how can we be rich when millions of poor American children go to bed hungry?

Alexandra Paul

#93. Rich countries want unfettered access to poor countries' markets, which are often heavily protected by tariffs, but they don't want to give up all the protections for their own goods and services.

Daniel Altman

#94. If you neglect those who are currently poor and stable, you may create more poor and unstable people. There has been a tremendous concentration of donor interest in countries that are seen as particularly fragile - but it becomes harder to mobilise money for sub-Saharan, plain poor countries.

Helen Clark

#95. I'll always be American in my world view and allegiance. American in the naive way I go to other countries and tell them how they should treat their poor or clean their water.

Eddie Huang

#96. In a perfect world what poor countries at the lowest rungs of economic development need is not a multi-party democracy, but in fact a decisive benevolent dictator to push through the reforms required to get the economy moving

Dambisa Moyo

#97. Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female.

Nicholas D. Kristof

#98. And it is practically the same in the case of the four or five million poor peasants in France, and also for Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, and two of the Scandinavian countries. Everywhere small and medium sized industry prevails.

Herman Gorter

#99. China has always maintained that all countries, big or small, rich or poor, strong or weak, are equal members of the international community and they should stand and speak in the world as such.

Li Peng

#100. The impact of climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the poor persons within all countries. It will therefore exacerbate inequalities in health status and access to adequate food, clean water and other resources.

Rajendra K. Pachauri