Poverty Quotes

Most popular poverty quotes

Is there anything more humiliating than being condemned [to an existence in which] you can't earn your daily bread? - Pope Francis quote.
Is there anything more humiliating than being condemned [to an existence in which] you can't earn your daily bread?
Pope Francis Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2002
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money. - P. J. O'Rourke quote.
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving. - George Eliot quote.
One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

Giving

It is good enough to talk of God while we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to a nicer luncheon, but how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day? To them God can only appear as bread and butter. - Mahatma Gandhi quote.
It is good enough to talk of God while we are sitting here after a nice breakfast and looking forward to a nicer luncheon, but how am I to talk of God to the millions who have to go without two meals a day? To them God can only appear as bread and butter.

faith God

To view poverty simply as an economic condition, to be measured by statistics, is simplistic, misleading and false; poverty is a state of mind, a matter of horizons.
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient. - Sydney Smith quote.
Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
When hunger gets inside you, nothing else can.
— West African saying

proverbs charity African proverbs

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. - James Baldwin quote.
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.

money

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change. - Muhammad Ali quote.
Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

war

Poverty is a hellish state to be in, It is no virtue. It is a crime. - Marcus Garvey quote.
Poverty is a hellish state to be in, It is no virtue. It is a crime.
People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes.
I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable. - Michel de Montaigne quote.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.
Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker.

biblical proverbs

We were poor when I was young, but the difference then was the government didn't come around telling you you were poor. - Ronald Reagan quote.
We were poor when I was young, but the difference then was the government didn't come around telling you you were poor.
Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.
Poverty is the open mouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough. - Henry George quote.
Poverty is the open mouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough.
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation. - Samuel Johnson quote.
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy quote.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance. - Lyndon B. Johnson quote.
Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance.

education

For ye have the poor always with you.
— Matthew 26:11

biblical

Remember the poor, it costs nothing. - Josh Billings quote.
Remember the poor, it costs nothing.
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
Poverty is no sin! - George Herbert quote.
Poverty is no sin!
I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary. - Jules Fieffer quote.
I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.
Poverty makes a free man become a slave.
— African proverb

African proverbs proverbs

Borrowing is the first-born of poverty.
— African proverb

proverbs African proverbs

Poverty is "Who knows you?" Prosperity is "I am your relative."
— African proverb

proverbs African proverbs

Work is the medicine for poverty.
— African proverb

African proverbs proverbs

Poverty without debt is real wealth.
— African proverb

African proverbs proverbs

There's none so poor as he who knows not the joy of what he has.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. - W.E.B Du Bois quote.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

race hardship

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty. - Mother Teresa quote.
There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty.

kindness

Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. - Benjamin Franklin quote.
Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.

laziness

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love.  The poor know that it is money.

money

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. - Aristotle quote.
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
We think of poverty as a condition simply meaning a lack of funds, no money, but when one sees fifth, sixth, and seventh generation poor, it is clear that poverty is as complicated as high finance.
We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it. - Dorothy Day quote.
We must talk about poverty, because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.
Dorothy Day By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day
There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty. - George Farquhar quote.
There is no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.
For every talent that poverty has stimulated, it has blighted a hundred. - John W. Gardner quote.
For every talent that poverty has stimulated, it has blighted a hundred.

talent

America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known.
There is something about poverty that smells like death. - Zora Neale Hurston quote.
There is something about poverty that smells like death.
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man—the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse—the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end. - Washington Irving quote.
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man—the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse—the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
The poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul is irreparable. - Michel de Montaigne quote.
The poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul is irreparable.
It is a kind of blindness—poverty.  We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle. - Ouida quote.
It is a kind of blindness—poverty.  We can only grope through life when we are poor, hitting and maiming ourselves against every angle.
How many times have we picked up in the streets human beings who had been living like animals and were longing to die like angels! - Mother Teresa quote.
How many times have we picked up in the streets human beings who had been living like animals and were longing to die like angels!
Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging. - Francis of Assisi quote.
Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging.

religious

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. - Confucius quote.
In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

wealth

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. - Charles Darwin quote.
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation. - Kahlil Gibran quote.
Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
Those born poor who become rich are eager to tell us what good fortune it was to be forced to struggle with adversity. One wonders why they take the utmost pains to deprive their children of the same opportunity.