Poverty Quotes

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.

~ Madalyn Murray O'hair

Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.

~ Lester B. Pearson

This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.

~ Maxine Waters

As a child growing up during the Korean War, I knew poverty. I studied by candlelight.

~ Ban Ki-Moon

There are grave misgivings that the discussion on ecology may be designed to distract attention from the problems of war and poverty.

~ Indira Gandhi

This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

We have to realize that science is a double-edged sword. One edge of the sword can cut against poverty, illness, disease and give us more democracies, and democracies never war with other democracies, but the other side of the sword could give us nuclear proliferation, biogerms and even forces of darkness.

~ Michio Kaku

A doctrine of class war seemed to provide a solution to the problem of poverty to people who know nothing about how wealth is created.

~ Jeane Kirkpatrick

War, famine, poverty and oppression of the workers will continue while woman makes life cheap. They will cease only when she limits her reproductivity and human life is no longer a thing to be wasted.

~ Margaret Sanger

Poverty is about people lacking the tools they need to get on in life. And solving it is about tackling educational failure, antisocial behaviour, debt problems and addiction, and of course it's about work.

~ Theresa May

When I was a kid, politicians wanted to avoid talking about religion if they could. John F. Kennedy couldn't duck the issue, being Catholic and all. So how did he address it? By reminding Americans that religion shouldn't be an issue, that he was concentrating on big things like poverty and hunger and leading the space race.

~ Penn Jillette

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

~ Barack Obama

Our foremost priority is the removal of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, disease and illiteracy. All social welfare programmes must be implemented efficiently. Agencies involved in the delivery of services should have a strong sense of duty and work in a transparent, corruption-free, time-bound and accountable manner.

~ Pratibha Patil

To be a star is to own the world and all the people in it. After a taste of stardom, everything else is poverty.

~ Hedy Lamarr

Science can lift people out of poverty and cure disease. That, in turn, will reduce civil unrest.

~ Stephen Hawking

Something is wrong that we have to feed so many. Why should there be poverty with all of our science and technology? There is no deficit in human resources - it is a deficit in human will.

~ Coretta Scott King

You may feel overwhelmed by your own poverty and the labors of the day. But if you decide not to wait until you have more strength and more money, and if you pray for the Holy Spirit as you go, you will, when you arrive, know what to do and how to help someone even poorer than you are.

~ Henry B. Eyring

The themes that make one laugh always stem from poverty, hunger, misery, old age, sickness, and death. These are the themes that make Italians laugh, anyway.

~ Mario Monicelli

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.

~ Yusuf Hamied

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.

~ Kofi Annan

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

~ Khalil Gibran

We know we cannot achieve our twin goals of ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity without ending poverty and creating equality for women and girls.

~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Our goals for this nation must be nothing less than to double the size of our economy and bring prosperity and jobs, ownership and equality of opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our nation's pockets of poverty.

~ Jack Kemp

If we as a nation are to break the cycle of poverty, crime and the growing underclass of young people ill equipped to be productive citizens, we need to not only implement effective programs to prevent teen pregnancy, but we must also help those who have already given birth so that they become effective, nurturing, bonding parents.

~ Jane Fonda

Lack of education, old age, bad health or discrimination - these are causes of poverty, and the way to attack it is to go to the root.

~ Robert Kennedy

Every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea.

~ Nicholas D. Kristof

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

~ Viola Davis

Visit those who are sick, or who are in trouble, especially those whom God has made needy by age, or by other sickness, as the feeble, the blind, and the lame who are in poverty. These you shall relieve with your goods after your power and after their need, for thus biddeth the Gospel.

~ John Wycliffe

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.

~ Charles Caleb Colton

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness poverty and wealth have both failed.

~ Kin Hubbard

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

~ Samuel Johnson

I don't get up in the morning and think my mission is to end Britain. I do get up in the morning and think that my mission is to end poverty.

~ Douglas Alexander

No family gets rich from earning the minimum wage. In fact, the current minimum wage does not even lift a family out of poverty.

~ Jon Corzine

My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.

~ Jim Carrey

Technology has changed things, same as everywhere. But the economy has changed drastically. When Jamaica first won independence, our dollar was stronger than the U.S. dollar. Now ours is about 90 to one. That's had a big impact on crime and poverty.

~ Damian Marley

While Haiti has recently celebrated more than 200 years of independence from French colonial rule, the citizens of the island remain vulnerable to poverty, poor health, and political chaos.

~ Eliot Engel

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

~ Lyndon B. Johnson

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.

~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

What I would say to the young men and women who are beset by hopelessness and doubt is that they should go and see what is being done on the ground to fight poverty, not like going to the zoo but to take action, to open their hearts and their consciences.

~ Abbe Pierre

A rich, robust, well-resourced public education is one of the best routes out of poverty and a pathway to prosperity.

~ Randi Weingarten