Poor Quotes

There really is no correlation between age and one’s bank balance. I’ve met wealthy boys and broke men.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful.

~ Robert B. Reich

I tell you, say the rich,the poor are naughtbut dirty windwelling in air-shaftsover the cindersand droppings ofthe past, theirvoices thickwith greaseand ordure,sewer-greedto corrode the earwith the horrorsof the pastand the voidsof new stupidity.One could drownwaiting for the poorto makeone fine distinction.Yes, destroy ussay the richand you losethe rootsof God.

~ Norman Mailer

No one described him better than he did when someone accused him of being rich. “No, not rich,” he said. “I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.

~ Gabriel García Márquez

The most impoverished peasant can be delighted by the opening of the first spring flower, and the most wealthy aristocrat can curse the day he was born because of some petty offense to his sensibilities. She is a very wise woman. To achieve serenity we have to view life not as it is measured by the world around us but as we ourselves measure it. We must accept that the scales are not at all equal.

~ Emma Wildes

God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all—no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.

~ Ronald J. Sider

Do not really like rich people, as they make us poor people feel dopey and inadequate. Not that we are poor. I would say we are middle. We are very, very lucky. I know that. But still, it is not right that rich people make us middle people feel dopey and inadequate.

~ George Saunders

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

~ Flannery O'connor

A poor man is not disposed to quick and high resentment when he is among the rich: he is apt to yield to others, for he knows others are above him: he is not stiff and self-willed; he is patient with hard fare; he expects no other than to be despised, and takes it patiently; he does not take it heinously that he overlooked and but little regarded; he is prepared to be in a lowly place; he readily honours his superiors; he takes reproofs quietly; he readily honours others as above him; he easily yields to be taught, and does not claim much to his understanding and judgment; he is not over nice or humoursome, and has his spirit subdued to hard things; he is not assuming, nor apt to take much upon him, but it is natural for him to be subject to others. Thus it is with the humble Christian.

~ Jonathan Edwards

The rich are poor without the poor's acknowledgment of money.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If life really begins at forty, then all poor people die in their teens.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Nothing good came free. Even love. You paid for all things. And if you were poor, suffering was your currency.

~ Khaled Hosseini

Don't ever think that life is unfair. People may be different in status and identity, but what matters most is your personality. God created all humans with equal love and attention. In times that you think you are alone, remember that He is always there for you. He will never leave you because He loves you. Always bear in mind that all of us are His children and He is our father. And in times of need, hold on to Him because He will never let you suffer. Even though life varies in some circumstances, all will experience a composition of victory and failure. Victory as a reward and failure as a lesson. If you are born poor, do everything to achieve your dreams and strive for success. If you are born rich, be charitable to others and keep your feet on the ground. Everyone is special. Everyone is unique. Everyone is blessed. But not everyone knows how to value it. Be the best that you can become, always acquire happiness and live your life to the fullest!

~ Joe Mari Fadrigalan

I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.

~ Charles Bukowski

If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty.

~ Muhammad Yunus

When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.

~ Muhammad Yunus

The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability.

~ Muhammad Yunus

Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor.

~ Muhammad Yunus

[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all.

~ Michael Palin

You say you care about the poor? Tell me their names.

~ Craig Greenfield

Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldn't harm them to starve a little. The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the children's bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldn't cry so much for food. The old starved silently. (The North)

~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

This is the basis for the most important critique of microfinance. The poor are not entrepreneurs. The idea that more than a few will turn tiny loans into a viable business is simply unrealistic.

~ Ian Smillie

When everyone is poor you don't know you're poor. My father worked so some of the boys thought I was actually rich.

~ Stan Grant

Leaders should never alienate themselves from the poor, if their main aim is to alleviate poverty.

~ Gift Gugu Mona

The corporate media spends a lot of time covering the lifestyles of the rich and the famous, but not all that much time covering the poor and the desperate. To a large degree, these people , the millions of poor people in America, are invisible, living under the radar screen. Their suffering is not seen on our evening news. But it's there.

~ Bernie Sanders

It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless—he may be of worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of broken basin, or dirty rag.

~ George Macdonald

If you are poor and go without food and clothes, don't hope for wealth in paradise, you are already forsaken

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Many a rich man’s bed is bigger than many a poor woman’s bedroom; his bedroom, her house.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Not every poor or unemployed person who has one wears a political party’s t-shirt to reveal their political affiliation, some use it merely to conceal their nipples.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Leftovers are less tasty if they were left over by someone else, unless you are poor.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The day you forget about the poors, you become the poorest of the poor!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Charity is appeased when some rich person gives money to the poor while justice asks why one person can be that rich when so many are poor.

~ Ronald Rolheiser

Jesus,” I prayed silently, “please fix it so that my turn to read won’t come around.” And then the nun called my name, but before I stood I thought, “I’ll bet you think this is funny, huh, Jesus?” I stood and stared at the sentence assigned to me and believed that, through some miracle, I would suddenly be able to read it and not be humiliated. I stood there and stared at it until the children started giggling and snickering and Sister told me to sit down.

~ John William Tuohy

The poor stay poor here because they do not save enough.

~ Abhijit V. Banerjee

I realized that poverty was a kind of captivity.

~ Nancy E. Turner

There’s no snobbery like that of the poor toward one another.

~ Dorothy Salisbury Davis

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

Using money in one’s attempt to put an end to poverty is like using a border in one’s attempt to put an end to xenophobia.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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

Rich people read their bills. Poor people dread theirs.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana