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Poverty Quotes

Most Famous Poverty Quotes of All Time!

We have created a collection of some of the best poverty quotes so you can read and share anytime with your friends and family. Share our Top 10 Poverty Quotes on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

Quotes by Zora Neale Hurston

Social Security not only helps Americans enjoy a secure retirement, it has also kept millions of Americans out of poverty.

Quotes by Zoe Lofgren

India made a big mistake by signing up to TRIPS. With a population of 1.3 billion, India can't afford a monopoly in healthcare. Monopolies lead to higher prices and we can't allow them in a country like India with so much poverty and misery. It was like signing our own death warrant.

Quotes by Yusuf Hamied

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?

Quotes by Xi Jinping

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

Quotes by Woody Allen

Economic inequality is a corrosive force that undermines economic growth, puts a brake on the fight against poverty, and sparks social unrest.

Quotes by Winnie Byanyima

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

Quotes by William Samuel Johnson

The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty by how little.

Quotes by William R. Alger

I think that America in general is piratical. Every time we accept a paycheck for doing almost nothing, allowing us to live above the poverty line, we're engaging in piracy.

Quotes by Will Oldham

In Mexico, wealth and poverty live next to each other and are cordial with each other - in my experience.

Quotes by Whit Stillman

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.

Quotes by Washington Irving

A far greater factor than abolishing poverty is the deterrent effect of swift and certain consequences: swift arrest, prompt trial, certain penalty and - at some point - finality of judgment.

Quotes by Warren E. Burger

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Quotes by Walter Bagehot

We grew up in abject poverty. Acting, writing scripts and skits were a way of escaping our environment at a very young age.

Quotes by Viola Davis

I came from a very poor family and my main dream in life was to break out of this poverty.

Quotes by Viktor Yanukovych

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.

Quotes by Vik Muniz

The best thing about universal free school meals is that they would remove one of the embarrassing signals, easily picked up by children's supersensitive antennae, of family poverty.

Quotes by Victoria Coren Mitchell

Lagos is sometimes emblematic of disorder. In traffic, drivers make their own rules. There is a constant war between our street hawkers and our various forms of law enforcement deployed to eradicate the 'indiscipline' of poverty.

Quotes by Uzodinma Iweala

Capitalism - for the record - has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in the world.

Quotes by Trish Regan

Think about it: Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, North Korea, the former Soviet Union - they all start with the intention of leveling the playing field - or making things better for the little guy - and instead, they created misery, poverty, destruction and a permanent ruling class of bureaucrats.

Quotes by Trish Regan

While a handful of countries and a small number of people are leading ample life, dozens of countries and billions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America are being left in absolute poverty.

Quotes by Tran Duc Luong

Did you know that nearly one in three children live apart from their biological dads? Those kids are two to three times more likely to grow up in poverty, to suffer in school, and to have health and behavioral problems.

Quotes by Tony Dungy

When families break down, you have a lot of repercussion from that, from poverty to crime to lack of discipline.

Quotes by Tony Evans

Although they are some of the hardest working folks I know, rural Americans earn, on average, $11,000 less than their urban counterparts each year. And they are more likely to live in poverty.

Quotes by Tom Vilsack

You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way.

Quotes by Tom Waits

Full-time workers earning the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 only earn about $14,500 a year in wages - below the poverty line for a family of two. That's unacceptable.

Quotes by Tom Perez

In the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works a full time job should have to live in poverty. That's a fundamental value proposition, an article of faith in our country that I know an overwhelming majority of Americans agree on.

Quotes by Tom Perez

There's prejudice and poverty in Hungary as there is in every country.

Quotes by Tibor Fischer

By seeing the problem of poverty merely in terms of assistance, we overlook that our enormous economic advantage is deeply tainted by how it accumulated over the course of one historical process that has devastated the societies and cultures of four continents.

Quotes by Thomas Pogge

It seems far-fetched, even preposterous, to blame the global economic order for the persistence of severe poverty in countries that are ruled by obvious thugs and crooks.

Quotes by Thomas Pogge

To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.

Quotes by Thomas Paine

The poverty of a man of benevolence is not to be considered as poverty but only as his temporary inability to exercise his inherent duty.

Quotes by Thiruvalluvar

I grew up in Brooklyn, in what I now know was poverty. Sharing a tiny bedroom with my two brothers, eating government cheese and passing down sneakers until they were unpassable... I simply thought the whole world lived as such, especially in pre-gentrified Williamsburg of the 1980s.

Quotes by Theodore Melfi

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

Quotes by Theodore Parker

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

Quotes by Thein Sein

Defeating malaria is absolutely critical to ending poverty, improving the health of millions, and enabling future generations to reach their full potential.

Quotes by Tedros Adhanom

Social Security is the only thing most Americans can count on to keep them out of poverty during retirement.

Quotes by Ted Deutch

This country is going to implode, or put another way, it's going to get crushed under the weight of poverty. You can't have one percent of the people who own and control more wealth than the other 90 percent of the population.

Quotes by Tavis Smiley

Progress to reduce hunger is being made by tackling both the cause and the consequences of extreme poverty and famine.

Quotes by Tae Yoo

The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.

Quotes by T. E. Lawrence

Empowering small farmers to increase productivity, improve crop quality and access reliable markets is critical to addressing global hunger and poverty.

Quotes by Sylvia Mathews Burwell

Technologies, including cell phones, have the potential to help millions of poor people out of poverty by enabling access to a range of safe, affordable financial services - most importantly, savings accounts - that have long been out of reach.

Quotes by Sylvia Mathews Burwell

Knowledge in Sanskrit will go a long way in finding solutions to the contemporary problems like global warming, unsustainable consumption, civilisational clash, poverty, terrorism, etc.

Quotes by Sushma Swaraj

When I think how art education is eliminated whenever we get a budget crunch in the schools, I have to stand up and say that even when there was dire poverty ten blocks away from Tiffany Studios in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was art and creativity within.

Quotes by Susan Vreeland

Entertainment can be a more powerful driver than poverty.

Quotes by Sugata Mitra

When a mother feels cold, she asks the child to wear a sweater. Our concept of poverty is that way. When we do a project and people receive our help, we may think that they are getting benefited, but is this what they really wanted?

Quotes by Sudha Murty

Poverty is restriction and as such, it is the greatest injustice you can perpetrate upon yourself.

Quotes by Stuart Wilde

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

Quotes by Steven Soderbergh

The fact that apartheid has been tied up with white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and deliberate oppression makes the problem much more complex. Material want is bad enough, but coupled with spiritual poverty, it kills.

Quotes by Steven Biko

Obama's plan for higher taxes and more spending is a blueprint for perpetual poverty. The last thing America needs is more of the Democrats' class warfare that has left our economy a barren landscape.

Quotes by Steve Stockman

As a result of the current universal benefit, the poverty rate for seniors in America is about 10%. Without the universal benefit, it would be over 50%.

Quotes by Steve Israel

Since Social Security was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 to ensure economic security for American workers, poverty among American seniors has dramatically declined.

Quotes by Steve Israel

Forget about war or disease or poverty. The apocalypse is when America's elected president is no longer supervised by the unelected ruling establishment.

Quotes by Steve Hilton

For all the obsession in Washington and in college faculty lounges over income inequality, why isn't there more outrage over government policies that exacerbate the problem? There are hundreds of programs that make the poor poorer and increase poverty in America.

Quotes by Stephen Moore

One of the key principles of Trumponomics is that faster economic growth can help solve a multitude of other social and economic problems, from poverty to inner-city decline to lowering the national debt.

Quotes by Stephen Moore

Putting women first would mean strengthening America's social safety net, because a higher proportion of single-mother families live in poverty here than in any other wealthy country.

Quotes by Stephanie Coontz

If machines do everything well, including allocating capital and resources efficiently, can that be deflationary, can that eliminate poverty? I don't know. It's hard to be very optimistic if you look at how humans have behaved historically.

Quotes by Stanley Druckenmiller

My mother grew up in abject poverty in Mississippi, an elementary school dropout. Yet, with the support of women around her, she returned to school and graduated as class valedictorian - the only one of her seven siblings to finish high school. She became a librarian and then a United Methodist minister.

Quotes by Stacey Abrams

While my parents both worked full-time, we still grappled with the scourge of working-class poverty. But my entrepreneurial mother used her research skills to consult. And, along with my dad, she even ran a soul food restaurant for my great-aunt.

Quotes by Stacey Abrams

Financial inclusion helps lift people out of poverty and can help speed economic development. It can draw more women into the mainstream of economic activity, harnessing their contributions to society.

Quotes by Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Financial inclusion matters not only because it promotes growth, but because it helps ensure prosperity is widely shared. Access to financial services plays a critical role in lifting people out of poverty, in empowering women, and in helping governments deliver services to their people.

Quotes by Sri Mulyani Indrawati

If we are suffering illness, poverty, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; so soon as one has got used to not suffering one wants something else.

Quotes by Simone Weil

It wasn't simply that Clinton created the greatest prosperity in the country's history. Or that we created 22 million new jobs, more than ever before. Under Clinton, poverty was reduced 25%.

Quotes by Sidney Blumenthal

The first Parikrma school started in a slum where there were 70,000 people living below the poverty line. Our first school was on a rooftop of a building inside the slums, a second story building, the only second story building inside the slums. And that rooftop did not have any ceiling, only half a tin sheet. That was our first school.

Quotes by Shukla Bose

The present Arab uprising didn't stem from Israel. The old guard is trying to keep down the young chickens. The old guard is better organized. They may win elections, but unless they have a solution to poverty, to corruption, to oppression, they will not last. I am with the young people.

Quotes by Shimon Peres

The problem of the Middle East is poverty more than politics.

Quotes by Shimon Peres

Poverty and ignorance, which beget terror, are not eradicated by firing artillery shells. Borders do not stop rockets, and barbed wire does not prevent terror.

Quotes by Shimon Peres

We have to stand together against terror and the reasons for terrorism, which are poverty and ignorance.

Quotes by Shimon Peres

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

Quotes by Sherrod Brown

There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap.

Quotes by Sherman Alexie

CPEC will play its important role for eliminating terrorism and extremism and poverty alleviation in the region.

Quotes by Shehbaz Sharif

Poverty will not be allowed to become a wall in the way of education.

Quotes by Shehbaz Sharif

Poverty is the root of all evil.

Quotes by Sheikh Hasina

Stark inequality, poverty, and unemployment are driving increased social unrest and, consequently, social and economic risk. Environmental deterioration may well intensify social inequality.

Quotes by Sharan Burrow

When work is not underpinned by social protection, people risk falling into poverty traps.

Quotes by Sharan Burrow

Science is one of the comparative advantages of our knowledge-based economy, and focusing on our prowess in providing better tools to address diseases of poverty is one of the best forms of foreign aid.

Quotes by Seth Berkley

Growth is what solves most of the big economic and social problems: poverty, government deficits, quality of life, rising healthcare and retirement costs.

Quotes by Sergio Ermotti

While government clearly plays the major role in fighting poverty through policies on things such as education, tax, and trade, business creates the wealth that matters.

Quotes by Sergio Ermotti

Maybe poverty is a special case of something else. That something else is 'scarcity,' and anyone who has the experience of 'having very little' experiences the same psychology.

Quotes by Sendhil Mullainathan

Progress and Poverty was the most closely knit, fascinating, and convincing specimen of argumentation that, I believe, ever sprang from the mind of man.

Quotes by Scott Brooks

A whole generation of Americans will retire in poverty instead of prosperity, because they simply are not preparing for retirement now.

Quotes by Scott Cook

Kids who are the victims of broken families are more likely to end up in poverty, rehab, or jail. I'm a Republican, but I respect President Obama for setting the right example and addressing this problem.

Quotes by Sarah Huckabee Sanders

The legacy of slavery comes from the sustained political, legal and economic effort to link permanently an entire group of people to poverty - and to mystify that systematic disenfranchisement by making up something called race, which could serve as a distraction.

Quotes by Sarah Churchwell

For my own part, I have been wont to converse with poverty; and however disagreeable a companion she may be thought to be by the affluent and luxurious, who were never acquainted with her, I can live happily with her the remainder of my life if I can thereby contribute to the redemption of my country.

Quotes by Samuel Adams

In opposition to this detachment, he finds an image of man which contains within itself man's dreams, man's illness, man's redemption from the misery of poverty - poverty which can no longer be for him a sign of the acceptance of life.

Quotes by Salvatore Quasimodo

I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worthy nor such a one as that he should grant this to me, since I know most surely that poverty and affliction become me better than delights and riches.

Quotes by Saint Patrick

It is a most certain truth, that the richer we see ourselves to be, confessing at the same time our poverty, the greater will be our progress, and the more real our humility.

Quotes by Saint Teresa of Avila

I can't solve the poverty problem, but there are things you can do to mitigate its effects on kids.

Quotes by Sal Albanese

During my eleven years as a New York City public school teacher, I saw firsthand the impact that poverty has on the classroom. In low-income neighborhoods like Sunset Park, where I taught, students as young as five years old enter school affected by the stresses often created by poverty: domestic violence, drug abuse, gang activity.

Quotes by Sal Albanese

I've experienced poverty and plenty, and there's a lesson to be learned when you're brought up in poverty.

Quotes by S. Truett Cathy

India was a sensation. It was remarkable to see all those parrots flying about, the brilliant foliage and the brilliant sky. It was a tremendous pageant. I never noticed the poverty.

Quotes by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Poverty and the rule of race that is called apartheid drive the Transkeian migrant from security on the land to work in the cities, and then back again.

Quotes by Ruth First

Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged.

Quotes by Russell Simmons

I do remember the numbers runners, I do remember the poverty and bread lines. Harlem stays with you forever.

Quotes by Ruby Dee

Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society.

Quotes by Rowan Williams

To help the poor to a capacity for action and liberty is something essential for one's own health as well as theirs: there is a needful gift they have to offer which cannot be offered so long as they are confined by poverty.

Quotes by Rowan Williams

When you hear that China is overcrowded, that's an understatement. I was shocked at the number of people. Even in the rural areas. I was also shocked at the poverty and at the living conditions.

Quotes by Rosemary Mahoney

I have seen poverty first hand. My parents were not well-off. They were in Ban'gladesh and I - just a child then - was sent off to live in my uncle's house in Calcutta.

Quotes by Roopa Ganguly

There's a lot of freedom in having nothing. You don't have responsibility. You have nobody to answer to. But I'd rather deal without the poverty.

Quotes by Ron Cooper

You cannot be against a raise in the minimum wage and for cutting government assistance and still say that you are worried about the people living in poverty.

Quotes by Ron Crumpton

Raising the minimum wage would be a positive step in reducing poverty, the humiliation of living in poverty, and dependence on public assistance.

Quotes by Ron Crumpton

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