Poverty Quotes

“To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.”
― Jane Jacobs

“Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.”
― Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love: The Letters of Thomas Merton on Religious Experience and Social Concerns

“You can't eat straight A's.”
― Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

“For Ragamuffins, God's name is Mercy. We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God. Without mercy our darkness would plunge us into despair - for some, self-destruction. Time alone with God reveals the unfathomable depths of the poverty of the spirit. We are so poor that even our poverty is not our own: It belongs to the mysterium tremendum of a loving God.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“When a destitute mother starts earning an income, her dreams of success invariably center around her children. A woman's second priority is the household. She wants to buy utensils, build a stronger roof, or find a bed for herself and her family. A man has an entirely different set of priorities. When a destitute father earns extra income, he focuses more attention on himself. Thus money entering a household through a woman brings more benefits to the family as a whole.”
― Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

“the holy art of “giving for Jesus’ sake” ought to be much more strongly developed among us Christians. Never forget that all state relief for the poor is a blot on the honor of your savior. The fact that the government needs a safety net to catch those who would slip between the cracks of our economic system is evidence that I have failed to do God’s work. The government cannot take the place of Christian charity. A loving embrace isn’t given with food stamps. The care of a community isn’t provided with government housing. The face of our Creator can’t be seen on a welfare voucher. What the poor need is not another government program; what they need is for Christians like me to honor our savior.”
― Abraham Kuyper, The Problem of Poverty

“Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.”
― Bono

“In this vagueness,
might a story of lives--
lives that have been crushed themselves
while crushing rocks into pieces--
be written.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Life’s mystery continued to trouble me
A question came to my mind,
is freedom dearer than life?
or does it become easier to live
when life becomes difficult?”
― Suman Pokhrel

“ليس الفقر هو الذي سيصير سببا في الحركة والتمرد لكنه الإحساس بالفقر، إن شعور الطبقة المحرومة بالنسبة للوضع الطبقي المتناقض في مجتمعها هو الذي يدفعها للحركة.”
― Ali Shariati, العودة إلى الذات

“There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge. Both poverty and riches are the offspring of thought.”
― Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

“We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.”
― E.M. Forster

“.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.”
― Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

“In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“What extreme poverty really means is that no matter how hard you work, you’re trapped. You can’t get out. Your efforts barely matter. You’ve been left behind by those who could life you up.”
― Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World

“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re just poor. That’s all we are.

It sucks to be poor, and it sucks to feel that you somehow deserve to be poor. You start believing that you’re poor because you’re stupid and ugly. And then you start believing that you’re stupid and ugly because you’re Indian. And because you’re Indian you start believing you’re destined to be poor. It’s an ugly circle and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“Poverty made a sound like a wet cough in the shadows of the room.”
― Ray Bradbury, The Golden Apples of the Sun

“Life is too short to be anything but happy. So kiss slowly. Love deeply. Forgive quickly. Take chances and never have regrets. Forget the past but remember what it taught you.”
― Abhishek Shukla, KISS Life "Life is what you make it"

“Some people are silently struggling with burdens that would break our backs.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“بالا بروید پایین بیایید، اصلاً قرآن را بر سر جامعه‌ای پهن کنید، مادام که در آن جامعه در یک سو گرسنه بیچاره از سرما لرزان وجود دارد، و از سوی دیگر متنعمان برخوردار از همه چیز، این جامعه لجن است. تمام چهره‌اش را هم که با قرآن بپوشانید باز لجن است.”
― سید محمد حسینی بهشتی, بایدها و نبایدها

“What I did not know yet about hunger, but would find out over the next twenty-one years, was that brilliant theorists of economics do not find it worthwhile to spend time discussing issues of poverty and hunger. They believe that these will be resolved when general economic prosperity increases. These economists spend all their talents detailing the process of development and prosperity, but rarely reflect on the origin and development of poverty and hunger. A a result, poverty continues.”
― Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

“So I heard the boom of my father's rifle when he shot my best friend. A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.”
― Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

“It turned out that capitalism alone could make people not only rich and happy but also poor, hungry, miserable, and powerless.”
― Masha Gessen, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

“If you can't afford the good food or if you can't afford health care or if you don't have a job or if your car is dangerous because you can't get it fixed and you DIE, you just lost the game-bzzzzz-thanks for playing extreme capitalism.”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

“There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political interests reside. Personally, I think the elites worry too much about that. We dumb working folk were clubbed into submission long ago, and now require only proper medication for our high levels of cholesterol, enough alcohol to keep the sludge moving through our arteries, and a 24/7 mind-numbing spectacle of titties, tabloid TV, and terrorist dramas. Throw in a couple of new flavours of XXL edible thongs, and you've got a nation of drowsing hippos who will never notice that our country has been looted, or even that we have become homeless ourselves.”
― Joe Bageant, Rainbow Pie

“Hunger and necessity are poor teachers of morality. A society that cannot provide the basics of life does not get its laws obeyed.”
― A.J. Quinnell, Man on Fire

“We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t, that’s sure!”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“The poor, I am told, are kind to each other but that is because they have nothing to lose,' he said. 'The rich cannot afford to be.”
― M.R.C. Kasasian, The Mangle Street Murders

“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.”
― Phoolan Devi, The Bandit Queen Of India: An Indian Woman's Amazing Journey From Peasant To International Legend

“Ifemelu would also come to learn that, for Kimberly, the poor were blameless. Poverty was a gleaming thing; she could not conceive of poor people being vicious or nasty because their poverty had canonized them, and the greatest saints were the foreign poor.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah