Best 2723 quotes in «poverty quotes» category

A risk to own anything : a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around. Not enough shoes, cars, cigarettes. Too many people too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day.

Arleen thanked Pana. Getting off the phone, she thanked Jesus. She smiled. When she smiled she looked like a different person. The press had loosened its grip. From landlords, she had heard eighty-nine nos but one yes. Jori accepted his mother’s high five. He and his brother would have to switch schools. Jori didn’t care. He switched schools all the time. Between seventh and eighth grades, he had attended five different schools—when he went at all. At the domestic-violence shelter alone, Jori had racked up seventeen consecutive absences. Arleen saw school as a higher-order need, something to worry about after she found a house.

Arleen’s children did not always have a home. They did not always have food. Arleen was not always able to offer them stability; stability cost too much. She was not always able to protect them from dangerous streets; those streets were her streets. Arleen sacrificed for her boys, fed them as best she could, clothed them with what she had. But when they wanted more than she could give, she had ways, some subtle, others not, of telling them they didn’t deserve it.

As an experienced electrical engineer in the USA, I was earning in excess of $100,000 annual salary plus benefits. There was no incentive whatsoever to be disabled and in poverty on a corporate government disability program.

As every slumdweller knew, there were three main ways out of poverty: finding an entrepreneurial niche, as the Husains had found in garbage; politics and corruption, in which Asha placed her hopes; and education.

As for my own answers to any of this? I have none. I'm far more confused than before I first went. I've had no great epiphanies, no profound realisations, but since returning home I've resigned myself to this one thing: that, putting the economics and politics of it all aside - naive as that may be - what it all boils down to is individuals. It's a simple interaction between just two people: one, a person with opportunities and choices, and who could get a flight out tomorrow should they choose; the other, a person with few options - if any. If nothing else, it's a gesture. An attempt. Food and a tent for Toto. Burns dressing for Jose. A little operating theatre with car batteries and boiled instruments, where Roberto can ply his trade. Free HIV treatment for Elizabeth, who'll never be cured and will always live in a hut anyway, but who'll have a longer, healthier life because of it. And sometimes it's little more than a bed in which to die peacefully, attended to by family and health workers... but hey, that's no small thing in some parts. My head says it's futile. My heart knows differently.

As humans, we must make a separate peace with each of these realities - with our membership in a global community and with our solitary existence. What exists between the two is not so much a boundary as it is a wormhole connecting two different yet parallel universes. Issues in one universe show up in corresponding forms in the other. And we must discover for ourselves what right living, for us, looks like in each.

As I was to learn, patience and latitude and even humility are, paradoxically, the handmaidens of wealth, because virtue is costly only for those who own nothing else.

As long as money is respected, poor will be disrespected!

As long as we have MEMORIES, yesterday REMAINS and as long as we have HOPE, tomorrow AWAITS...

A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society.

As one 1935 study put it, boys and girls who were 15 or 16 in 1929 when the Depression began are no longer children; they are grown-ups – adults who had never, since they left school, had anything productive to do; adults in the embittered by years of suffering and hardship. The President's Advisory Commission on Education was to warn of a whole lost generation of young people.

A spoon does not know whether it enters a rich or poor man's mouth.

As to having a preference, that was new too. You take what you're given and you're grateful for it. Once that message is well and truly ingrained in you, it feels like vainglory to imagine one's own likes and dislikes could matter to other people.

As they were walking, a beggar came up, holding his hand out and crying, "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!" Mike kept on going but Mitchell stopped. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out twenty paise and placed it in the beggar's dirty hand. Mike said, "I used to give to beggars when I first came here. But then I realized, it's hopeless. It never stops." "Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you," Mitchell said. "Yeah, well," Mike said, "obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta.

As time diminishes, your life also diminishes with it.

A sure way a country can develop is through a true development of the masses. Yes! A sure way to ensure a true freedom of the people is for the people take up their own destiny into their hands and bond their strengths to positively dare with a clear vision and fortitude like the eagle for a great change in wisdom and in peace, devoid of rebellious motive, massacre and nepotism, and with tenacity, direct the thought, policy and inspiration of the few people who rule the masses for the best change ever! Until this is done, the masses shall always cry out of ignorance, not knowing the real power within them and beg at the feet of the few people for how they should live their lives!

At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times?

A time of solitude will always produce some fruits.

A tramp, therefore, is a celibate from the moment when he takes to the road. He is absolutely without hope of getting a wife, a mistress, or any kind of woman except — very rarely, when he can raise a few shillings — a prostitute. It is obvious what the results of this must be: homosexuality, for instance, and occasional rape cases. But deeper than these there is the degradation worked in a man who knows that he is not even considered fit for marriage. The sexual impulse, not to put it any higher, is a fundamental impulse, and starvation of it can be almost as demoralizing as physical hunger. The evil of poverty is not so much that it makes a man suffer as that it rots him physically and spiritually. And there can be no doubt that sexual starvation contributes to this rotting process. Cut off from the whole race of women, a tramp feels himself degraded to the rank of a cripple or a lunatic. No humiliation could do more damage to a man’s self-respect.

At least ten times as many people died from preventable, poverty-related diseases on September 11, 2011, as died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that black day. The terrorist attacks led to trillions of dollars being spent on the ‘war on terrorism’ and on security measures that have inconvenienced every air traveller since then. The deaths caused by poverty were ignored. So whereas very few people have died from terrorism since September 11, 2001, approximately 30,000 people died from poverty-related causes on September 12, 2001, and on every day between then and now, and will die tomorrow. Even when we consider larger events like the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed approximately 230,000 people, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed up to 200,000, we are still talking about numbers that represent just one week’s toll for preventable, poverty-related deaths — and that happens fifty-two weeks in every year.

A truly compassionate man gives a poor woman a portion of his meal before he eats, not after he has eaten.

At the end of the school day, we walked the long, cold way home feeling happy and hungry. There we found a warm fire, country ham with gravy and hot biscuits, and a mother to hug us! If snow blew under the doors that night, what did it matter? Christmas time was just around the corner.

...a UBI is not a salve for a world of technological unemployment, or a powerful antipoverty measure, or a form of social dividend, or a way to boost the earnings of the working poor. Rather, it is all those things and more: a paradigmatic shift that would free people from having to do more work that they did not want to do at all. A UBI would, in essence, lop off the bottom of the psychologist Abraham Maslow's 'hierarchy of needs', where air, food, water, and shelter reside, with self-transcendence up at the other end. A UBI would give people the economic bandwidth to do what they wanted with their lives... Let the robots do the dirty work. Let the people do what they want.

Austerity is theft, the greatest transfer of wealth from poor to the rich since the enclosures.

At the street corner, a one-storey house built of freestone, but repulsively decrepit and filthy, seemed to command the entrance, like a gaol. And here, indeed, lived La Méchain, like a vigilant proprietess, ever on the watch, exploiting in person her little population of starving tenants.

Austerity should not be a death sentence. Every person should be able to retire with the benefits they’ve earned and dignity they deserve.

A wise man is someone who knows how to convert obstacles into resources.

A village that takes care of its children is better than a city that abuses its youth.

A woman walks by the gate, leading a little boy with a balloon of hunger in his belly and hair bleached by malnutrition.

A writer can live by his writing. If not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. The nature of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. Whatever be your calling, and however much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind.

A writer is anyone who follows only the truth of who they are, without ever relying on anything other than the poverty and solitude of that truth. In this respect, children and women in love are born writers.

Because of poverty and ignorance, not everyman living on earth lives in the same epoch!

Be always employed to something useful.

Because he has money he's a kind of god. Because I have none I'm a kind of worm. A worm because I've failed and I have no money. A worm because I'm not even sure if I hate you.

Because poor people lack access to private space (often sharing small apartments with numerous family members or relatives), their criminal activity is more likely to be conducted outdoors.

Become great by converting your time into quality product.

Because taxpaying is seen as an emblem of civic worthiness, denying the poor the status of taxpayers has the effect of denying their political standing. Classing a large percentage of the populace as a kind of second-class citizenry is genuinely toxic for democratic norms.

Beggars, alas, could not be choosers.

Begin to invest quality time. Start the conversion process and birth your products.

Before I was married, I thought the sound of bangles jangling on my forearms would be delightful. I looked forward to being able to wear bells around my ankles and silver necklaces around my neck, but not any more, not since I had learned what they represented for the man who gave them. A necklace was no prettier than a piece of of rope that ties a goat to a tree, depriving it of freedom.

Begin to think of how you could maximize the time you have through hard work and through concentration.

Being an altruist I have an urge in mylife to help poor's but im not Bill Gates

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")

Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it’s a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.

Being poor, living in poverty, seemed a lot like probation - the crime being a lack of means to survive.

Begin to invest your time into research and studies about how you could impact your world positively because only through the proper conversion of time could you become great.

Being Wise & Being Smart are two different things anyone can be smart but those who master the art of knowing what to overlook in this journey called life deserves to be called Wise

Believe me I do understand and I am disgusted by the idea that we should aim for any less for a child from a poor background than a rich one.

Begin to lay hold of every minute of your life and convert it into something of value to benefit the world. Never allow any of your time to be wasted on the frivolities of life.