Top 100 What Is Poverty Quotes
#1. To be able to proclaim the Good News to the poor we must know what is poverty.
Mother Teresa
#2. What is poverty, if not violence. Like, the number of people who die every year from starvation and from hunger and poverty is in the tens of millions.
Tom Morello
#3. If we want to reduce poverty and misery, if we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies.
Nikola Tesla
#4. Yes I graduated from high school. Welfare. Temporary work, please. What is my problem? I want to eat.
Alexis De Veaux
#5. The devadasis have a multilayered story, a story in which poverty, deprivation and injustice against women is central - but what has happened to them is absolutely an outcome of imperialism and the impact of British rule in India.
Beeban Kidron
#6. I noticed, rich people never toss away their pennies in their driveways, middle-class always chuck them there, and stray dogs lick up what little pennies they find on poverty ground.
Anthony Liccione
#7. Greece is a bleak, unsmiling desert, without agriculture, manufactures or commerce, apparently. What supports its poverty-stricken people or its Government, is a mystery.
Mark Twain
#8. Poor is what people become, not what they are born to be.
Saji Ijiyemi
#9. Only that which lasts forever is real. That which is done in the temple lasts forever; therefore, the temple is the real world. Most of what we experience "out there," such as sickness, wealth, poverty, fame, etc., lasts for only a short period of time, so it is not the real world.
John H. Groberg
#10. That which constitutes the cause of the economic poverty of our age is what the English call over-production (which means that a mass of things are made which are of no use to anybody, and with which nothing can be done).
Leo Tolstoy
#11. The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.
Umberto Eco
#12. I've always thought that was the lamest argument - that we need some people to be poor in order to remind the rest of us to be grateful. All that really means is that someone has to suffer poverty so other people can feel better about themselves. What a selfish way to look at the world.
Josephine Angelini
#13. What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?
Paul A. Samuelson
#14. Nothing is 'wrong' with me, Dan. What's wrong with you? she said in the same eerily quiet voice, dark eyes fixated on Dan, as she breathed heavily.
Martin Hopkins
#15. Ignorant people are apt to overrate the value of what is called education. The sons of the poor, having suffered the privations of poverty, think of wealth as the mother of joy.
Robert Green Ingersoll
#16. There will be no magic, whatsoever. Magic is either a poverty-stricken necessity or a wealthy fantasy. We are in neither of those straits, and what cannot be explained will be left unknown.
Jesse Ball
#17. Devotees are not impressed by the poverty or wealth in material sense in any way; what impresses is devotion.
Radhanath Swami
#18. The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money ... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
Alan Watts
#19. It is well known that large numbers of poor people attribute their poverty to what they call the tyranny of capital; meaning thereby the unwillingness of the owners of capital to allow others to use it without security for its safe return and compensation for its use.
Frederic Bastiat
#20. We have the resources to allow everybody to live with dignity,; we have the technology to do it; what we don't have is yet another excuse!
Adriano Bulla
#21. Do you not enslave people now?" asks the man. "Chains are forged of many strange metals. Poverty is one. Fear, another. Ritual and custom are yet more. All actions are forms of slavery, methods of forcing people to do what they deeply wish not to do.
Robert Jackson Bennett
#22. Millions who endure poverty and bad government can now know what they are missing. To see how the other half lives all they have to do is switch on their television sets.
Richard M. Nixon
#23. Poverty is relative, and the lack of food and of the necessities of life is not necessarily a hardship. Spiritual and social ostracism, the invasion of your privacy, are what constitute the pain of poverty.
Alice Foote MacDougall
#24. It betrays a poverty of ambition if all you think about is what goods you can buy instead of what good you can do.
Barack Obama
#25. What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty?
Sarah Bernhardt
#26. Abu Dharr once described the people of the world, says, They breed what will they ultimately bury, they build what will eventually be destroy, they hold firm to what is emphemeral, and they forsake what is everlasting. Hence, blessed are the two cries people abominate most: Death and poverty.
Abu Dhar Al-Ghifari
#27. If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works
Barack Obama
#28. Social justice has to do with issues such as poverty, inequality, war, racism, sexism, abortion, and lack of concern for ecology because what lies at the root at each of these is not so much someone's private sin but rather a huge, blind system that is inherently unfair.
Ronald Rolheiser
#29. A man is rich not only by what he has, but also, and above all, by what he doesn't.
Neel Burton
#30. The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDs, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of those wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead - everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real.
Bruce Jackson
#31. Everybody finds themselves sometimes deficient in what they need, and put to inconvenience ... the richest people may easily be without something they want, and that is practically to suffer poverty. Accept such occurrences cheerfully, rejoice in them, bear them willingly.
Francis De Sales
#32. What happened after Katrina is that people were stirred to action; there were an enormous number of contributions by people trying to make a difference. But then we forget. We've forgotten Katrina victims, we've forgotten the face of poverty.
Elizabeth Edwards
#33. Poverty is what you see in the eyes of a Black child living in the squattercamp.
Matsime Simon Mohapi
#34. I think of what it means to be a teenager in America, necessarily pushing boundaries, making expected mistakes. Here there is no margin for error: a mistake, no matter how insignificant, dashes any small hopes to break the cycle of poverty. Here in Kibera the world is relentless and unforgiving.
Jessica Posner
#35. A lot of country music is sad. I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times. It applies to music. Three chords and the truth - that's what a country song is. There is a lot of heartache in the world.
Willie Nelson
#36. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to ask alms of a stranger when you've never done it before, what a psychological barrier separates the honest man from the panhandler. ("Dusk To Dawn")
Cornell Woolrich
#37. What is life worth if one has nothing to give away? This lack, it seems to me, must be the sharpest pang of poverty.
Mabel Osgood Wright
#38. What I would say to the young men and women who are beset by hopelessness and doubt is that they should go and see what is being done on the ground to fight poverty, not like going to the zoo but to take action, to open their hearts and their consciences.
Abbe Pierre
#39. Oh my son, so poor in doing the right things, so rich in doing the wrong things! What great poverty it is to be so rich!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#40. The irony of man's fate reflected in his image: that all men, from beggar to emperor, from harlot to queen, from ragged clerk to Pope, must come to this. No matter what their poverty or power in life, all is vanity, equalized by death.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#41. Some foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do engage in finger-pointing at us. First, China does not export revolution; second, it does not export famine and poverty; and third, it does not mess around with you. So what else is there to say?
Xi Jinping
#42. Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?
George Ryan
#43. Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
Alain De Botton
#44. It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art.
Samuel Johnson
#45. I've been working on issues of poverty for more than 20 years, and so it's ironic that the problem that and question that I most grapple with is how you actually define poverty. What does it mean?
Jacqueline Novogratz
#46. Poor is the man whom is not content with what he has.
Rita Gonzalez
#47. To put the issue bluntly, are the Beatitudes true? If so, why doesn't the church encourage poverty and mourning and meekness and persecution instead of striving against them? What is the real meaning of the Beatitudes, this cryptic ethical core of Jesus' teaching?
Philip Yancey
#48. Despite what you've heard, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance leads to poverty, illness, poor jobs and broken relationships.
Alan R. Zimmerman
#49. Monsignor ... you are asking whether I promise God chastity, poverty, and obedience. I heard what you said and my answer is no
Denis Diderot
#50. If the pocket goes dry but the mind is fertile, awake and plant something noble in the mind and you shall surely reap something noble in the end, no matter what!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#51. I may not remember the name of a book's author, but let it be clear, what I will not forget is the violence, the poverty and the desperation that Mexico is living through.
Enrique Pena Nieto
#52. And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, - all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, - who is good? not that men are ignorant, - what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men. He
W.E.B. Du Bois
#53. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
Herbert Simon
#54. Racism is not nearly as important as poverty. That's the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at all these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war.
Marjane Satrapi
#55. Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as poverty of what it has not.
Publilius Syrus
#56. I know what it is to be in need and what it is to have more than enough. I have learnt this secret, so that anywhere, at any time, I am content, whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little. I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.
Anonymous
#58. So I say a name, even if self-bestowed, is better than a number. In the register of the potter's field I shall soon have both. What wealth!
Ambrose Bierce
#59. We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don't know is how to photograph affluence - whose other face is poverty.
Dorothea Lange
#60. He wondered if what he had taken for the richness of silence was really the poverty of never being heard [ ... ]. How could he have forgotten what he had always known: there is no match for the silence of God.
Nicole Krauss
#61. What is the true story of Fantine? It is the story of society's purchase of a slave. A slave purchased from poverty, hunger, cold, loneliness, defencelessness, destitution. A squalid bargain: a human soul for a hunk of bread. Poverty offers and society accepts.
Victor Hugo
#62. Gramacho is the last landfill that allows people in. Brazil is the leading nation in recycling due to its poverty. There are people there surviving from what they find in the garbage.
Vik Muniz
#63. The great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly what they don't want; and then they get tired of coming.
Charles Dickens
#64. What you do [to provide better aid is] you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas.
Ernesto Sirolli
#65. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is pain. I don't want you to go through that. So what I'm trying to do is save you decades of time by bringing you the best.
Tony Robbins
#66. Poverty diminishes confidence. So if someone offers you a grain store, even if you really need a plough, you take what is offered to you.
Ann Cotton
#67. I believe that what I've worked for - women and children, civil rights against poverty, trying to level the playing field for people to have a better chance - is what I still believe is important and what I'm trying to do today.
Hillary Clinton
#68. Living simply is not about living in poverty or self-inflicted deprivation. It's about living an examined life where one has determined what is truly important and enough ... and then just let go of all the rest.
Duane Elgin
#69. Self-pity is the worst poverty. When a person says, 'I am ... ' with pity, before he has said anything more he has diminished himself to half of what he is; and what is said further, diminishes him totally; nothing more of him is left afterwards.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
#70. If you come from Africa with your economic poverty and your cultural riches, and you meet someone like Peter Gabriel or a person from a big record company, and they tell you that what you are doing is marvelous, that makes you feel powerful.
Youssou N'Dour
#71. Every human being wants to be seen, really seen, by another human being, not as a statistic in some sociological study, not as a casualty of poverty, not as a victim of a corrupt social structure. We can start by seeing both what is and what can be.
Nancy Rue
#72. The conclusion is that both emotional poverty and an aversion to company are not symptoms of autism but consequences of autism, its harsh lockdown on self-expression and society's near-pristine ignorance about what's happening inside autistic heads.
Naoki Higashida
#73. Everybody in politics claims to want to get everybody out of poverty. What's the opposite? Wealth. And what is often criticized by the left? Wealth.
Rush Limbaugh
#74. Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#75. Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings people like us so close to God. It's the fact that no one is more curious than we are to learn why we are here on earth and what will happen to us in the next world.
Orhan Pamuk
#76. Poverty is not what's in your pocket - its what you have in your head.
John Hope Bryant
#77. My God, give me neither poverty nor riches; but whatsoever it may be Thy will to give, give me with it a heart which knows humbly to acquiesce in what is Thy will.
Christian Scriver
#78. People minus space equals Poverty ... What is living for? If the answer is a life of dignity, decency and opportunity, then every increase in population means a decrease in all three. The crowd is a threat to every single being.
Marya Mannes
#79. Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty. Given a comfortable middle-class start in life, the artist is almost sure to end up by becoming a bellyacher, constantly complaining because the public does not rush forward at once to proclaim him.
Sherwood Anderson
#80. It's hard to do it because you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period.
Bill O'Reilly
#81. The real wants of nature are the measure of enjoyments, as the foot is the measure of the shoe. We can call only the want of what is necessary poverty.
Pope Clement I
#82. The hard part that I had to go through in life, period, is living in poverty and not being able to get what I want.
Derrick Rose
#84. I wonder what it feels like to have no desires left because you have satisfied them all, smothered them with money even before they are born. Is an existence without desire very desirable? And is the poverty of desire better than rank poverty itself?
Vikas Swarup
#85. The Democrats need poor, dependent people if they're gonna stay in business. And if we don't have enough poverty at home, we'll import it. That's what our open-borders policy is: It's about importing poverty and importing the number of potential registered voters for the Democrat party.
Rush Limbaugh
#86. What is concerning is that work in the informal sector is characterised by vulnerability, low wages and no rights. So it is not the way that we lift people out of poverty in Africa.
Winnie Byanyima
#87. By the numbers, by all the official records, here at the confluence of history, of racism, of poverty, and economic power, this is what our lives are worth: nothing.
Jesmyn Ward
#88. Real poverty is about doing what you have to do as opposed to what you want.
Lionel Shriver
#89. The Venus Project is a translation of all religions: The end of war, the end of poverty, the brotherhood of humanity. If that isn't spiritual, like I've said before, I don't know what is.
Jacque Fresco
#90. The rich eat life, the poor eat death; so what is the problem they ask?
Anthony Liccione
#91. Go forth today, by the help of God's Spirit, vowing and declaring that in life - come poverty, come wealth, in death - come pain or come what may, you are and ever must be the Lord's. For this is written on your heart, 'We love Him because He first loved us.'
Charles Spurgeon
#92. What causes terrorism is disrespect, a lack of justice, and poverty.
Jodie Evans
#93. It is a good thing to know what it is to be poor, and a better thing if you can do it in company.
Marilynne Robinson
#94. What Chavez has done [in Venezuela] is that he has brought extreme poverty to an end.
Oliver Stone
#95. The idea of black poverty is always presented as the outcome of white wealth, but what South Africa has is a poverty problem, not necessarily a black poverty problem because it is a largely black country.
Ferial Haffajee
#96. Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?
Maxine Hong Kingston
#97. But to die to escape from poverty or love or anything painful is not the mark of a brave man, but rather of a coward; for it is softness to fly from what is troublesome,
David Ross
#98. If our family was poor, of what did our poverty consist? If our clothes were torn the torn places only let in the sun and wind. In the winter we had no overcoats, but that only meant that we ran rather than loitered. Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty.
Sherwood Anderson
#99. True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility and poverty, and, despite mockery and disgrace, wretchedness, suffering, and death, as things divine.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#100. There does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing.
Katherine Mansfield
