c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country will come to its senses?
— W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Oh, man, why is this the life? Why is it? Why is one rich and the other poor? Why is one black and the other white?
— Tony D'Souza, Whiteman
So they had all had more troubles than she. Did that really make them superior? If two men were walking along the street and a brick fell on one, missing the other, did that make the injured one a better person?
— Elizabeth Harrower
Success, just like poverty is a state of mind. You can become successful instantly with a simple decision and commitment. Long lasting and pronounced success comes to those who renew their commitment to a mindset of abundance every minute, hour and day.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
We have got into the habit of admiring colossal bandits, whose opulence is revered by the entire world, yet whose existence, once we stop to examine it, proves to be one long crime repeated ad infinitum, but those same bandits are heaped with glory, honors, and power, their crimes are hallowed by the law of the land, whereas, as far back in history as the eye can see—and history, as you know is my business—everything conspires to show that a venial theft, especially of inglorious foodstuffs, such as bread crusts, ham, or cheese, unfailingly subjects its perpetrator to irreparable opprobrium, the categoric condemnation of the community, major punishment, automatic dishonor, and inexpiable shame, and this for two reasons, first because the perpetrator of such an offense is usually poor, which in itself connotes basic unworthiness, and secondly because his act implies, as it were, a tacit reproach to the community. A poor man’s theft is seen as a malicious attempt at individual redress . . . Where would we be? Note accordingly that in all countries the penalties for petty theft are extremely severe, not only as a means of defending society, but also as a stern admonition to the unfortunate to know their place, stick to their caste, and behave themselves, joyfully resigned to go on dying of hunger and misery down through the centuries forever and ever …
— Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
An indoor man eats nothing, except that which is prepared and served by his mother with lots of insults, an outdoor man eats that which he buys, prepares, served and eaten with lots of respect.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
All over the world there are students, teachers and parents that face serious challenges every day. They need help with real problems that have life-altering consequences—and a group of intelligent professionals brought together to advise and educate stakeholders in need of help ought to be able to do so without behaving like a middle school drama queen.
— Tucker Elliot, The Rainy Season
As one 1935 study put it, boys and girls who were 15 or 16 in 1929 when the Depression began are no longer children; they are grown-ups – adults who had never, since they left school, had anything productive to do; adults in the embittered by years of suffering and hardship. The President's Advisory Commission on Education was to warn of a whole lost generation of young people.
— Robert A. Caro, The Path to Power
You can admire the way someone meets hard circumstances, but you can't admire him because of them.
— Elizabeth Harrower, In Certain Circles
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, N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
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, Goddess
Rich people read their bills. Poor people dread theirs.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Is there for honest Poverty  That hings his head, an' a' that;  The coward slave-we pass him by,  We dare be poor for a' that!  For a' that, an' a' that.  Our toils obscure an' a' that,  The rank is but the guinea's stamp,  The Man's the gowd for a' that.  What though on hamely fare we dine,  Wear hoddin grey, an' a that; Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;  A Man's a Man for a' that:  For a' that, and a' that,  Their tinsel show, an' a' that;  The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,  Is king o' men for a' that.  Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;  Tho' hundreds worship at his word,  He's but a coof for a' that:  For a' that, an' a' that,  His ribband, star, an' a' that:  The man o' independent mind  He looks an' laughs at a' that.  A prince can mak a belted knight,  A marquis, duke, an' a' that; But an honest man's abon his might, Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!  For a' that, an' a' that,  Their dignities an' a' that;  The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,  Are higher rank than a' that.  Then let us pray that come it may,  (As come it will for a' that,)  That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,  Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.  For a' that, an' a' that,  It's coming yet for a' that,  That Man to Man, the world o'er,  Shall brothers be for a' that.
— Robert Burns
Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines and slums without literacy or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our own instant hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
— Caitlin Moran
Distinctive facial features of a parent are poor people’s paternity test.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
The lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation each day is like 6 september 11ths every single day, a silent tsunami that happens every week.
— Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
Poverty is a great educator. Having no boundaries and refusing to be ignored, it mostly teaches hopelessness. But not always. Politics is also a great educator. Mostly it teaches, I am afraid, cynicism. But not always. Television is a great educator as well. Mostly it teaches consumerism. But not always. It is the "not always" that keeps the romantic spirit alive in those who write about schooling. The faith is that despite some of the more debilitating teachings of culture itself, something can be done in school that will alter the lenses through which one sees the world; which is to say, that nontrivial schooling can provide a point of view from which what IS can be seen clearly, what WAS as a living present, and what WILL BE as filled with possibility
— Neil Postman
If you have a poverty of heart then you are the poorest among the poor.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
P3- every simple need to which an institutional answer is found permit the invention of a new class of poor and a new definition of poverty
— Ivan Illich
Being broke didn't seem so awful as it had yesterday, being broke but being at peace with the world.("Don't Wait Up For Me Tonight")
— Cornell Woolrich, Violence
The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty is hard on.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
To fight the poverty, we must feel the poverty.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it’s a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.
— Sol Luckman, Beginner's Luke
It takes money to make money, even begging. Humans are herd animals. If a stranger’s bleeding to death beside the road, most people won’t stop to offer a Band-Aid. But get the ball rolling with a couple Good Samaritans, and before you know it you’ve got more eager philanthropists than you know what to do with.
— Sol Luckman, Beginner's Luke
When you hear her say,'What else can an old woman doon hills as wretched as these?'You look right at the sky,Clear through the bullet holes she has for eyes.And you look onthe cracks that begin around her eyesspread beyond her skinAnd the hills crack.And the temples crack.And the sky falls with a plateglass clatter around the shatter proof cronewho stands alone.And you are reducedto so much small changein her hand.
— Arun Kolatkar, Jejuri
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
Why else do you think we are permanently at war in various regions all over the world? And why is it the citizens of this country, one of the richest on earth, get poorer each year?
— James Morcan, The Orphan Factory
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
— Upton Sinclair - The Jungle
For the mentally disturbed, Marie knew these sandwich visits might be the only dependable moments in their lives. She also knew she delivered the sandwiches for her own sanity. Something would crumble inside of her if she ever walked by a homeless person and pretended not to notice. Or simply didn't care. In a way, she believed that homeless people were treated as Indians had always been treated. Badly. The homeless were like an Indian tribe, nomadic and powerless, just filled with more than any tribe's share of crazy people and cripples. So, a homeless Indian belonged to two tribes, and was the lowest form of life in the city. The powerful white men of Seattle had created a law that made it illegal to sit on the sidewalk. That ordinance was crazier and much more evil than any homeless person. Sometimes Marie wondered if she worked so hard at anything only because she hated powerful white men. She wondered if she went to college and received good grades just because she was looking for revenge.
— Sherman Alexie, Indian Killer
The important question of how poverty can be remedied is one which agitates and torments modern societies especially
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right
People in the city are poor because they are oppressed, discriminated against and alienated; people in the country are poor because they're too stupid to realize they ought to be living in the city.
— Garret Keizer, No Place But Here: A Teacher's Vocation in Rural Community
We cannot fight against the poverty and hunger in the world
—  when our stomachs are full of delicious food
Coca cola and McDonalds is spreading. Just like hunger and poverty.
— Tim Goossens
Many of my classmates have happier memories of Blessed Sacrament, and in time I would find my own satisfaction in the classroom. My first years there, however, I met with little warmth. In part, it was that the nuns were critical of working mothers, and their disapproval was felt by latchkey kids. The irony of course was that my mother wouldn't have been working such long hours if not to pay for that education she believed was the key to any aspirations for a better life.
— Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
Once our family was very small and we used to say, ‘’our planet has enough resources to feed all of us’’ but today, we are not that family and it is a burden on our planet to feed us. We have to reconsider our views and confess ‘’our planet has not enough resources to feed all of us anymore’’.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Learning about Poverty’. ‘Two young American Jesuits showed up at the Jesuit headquarters in Rome. Father Arrupe asked what assignment had brought them there. They explained that they were on their way to India to work with the poor, as part of their training. Afterward Arrupe said to an assistant, ‘it certainly costs us a lot of money to teach our men about poverty’.
— James     Martin, The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything
He was confronted at an early age with adult-strength realizations about powerlessness, desperation, and distrust, taking his dose right alongside the overwhelmed adults. This steady stream of shocks and realizations leaves so many boys raised in poor, urban areas stumbling toward manhood with a hardened exterior masking deep insecurities.
— Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
I went to Guatemala to help build a school but left wondering what "help" would really look like... I hadn't prepared myself for how humbled I'd feel, or how hard it would be to find my footing when witnessing a cycle of poverty that seemed to defy any sort of help.
— Dee Williams
Only by helping yourself first can you help the poor. Only by changing yourself first, can you change their condition. You achieve this by first removing from your mind any thoughts of poverty, for to think of something is to invoke it.
— Stephen Richards, How to Get Everything You Can Imagine: Volume 1: How Mind Power Works
Maybe your college professor taught that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That’s nonsense as well. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Ethiopia, Liberia, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, but they are home to the world’s poorest people.
— Walter Williams
The government belongs to the poor people of the country. We are custodian of people's hope. For whom should the government be? For educated people or few others. Government should be for the poor. If rich want to educate their children, they can send anywhere. If rich fall ill, hundreds of doctors are at service. So the foremost responsibility of the government should be to listen to the poor and work for them. If we do not work for the poor, the people will never pardon us.
— Narendra Modi
Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.
— Barbara Ehrenreich
Work, work, proletarians, to increase social wealth and your individual poverty; work, work, in order that becoming poorer, you may have more reason to work and become miserable. Such is the inexorable law of capitalist production.
— Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy
Here was the South Side--a million in captivity--stretching from this doorstep as far as the eye could see. And they didn't even read; depressed populations don't have the time or energy to spare. The affluent populations, which should have their help, didn't as far as could be discovered, read, either--they merely bought books and devoured them, but not in order to learn: in order to learn new attitudes.
— James     Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Anyone who said money didn't matter had never had to count the coins that fell between the cushions of the couch.
— Nora Roberts, Key of Knowledge
The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret: every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth.
— Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Without the sleeping bag I'm just somebody up early in the morning, sitting under a tree. With the sleeping bag I'm nobody up early, sitting under a tree: a slight, but important difference in how I’ll be perceived.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
Poor people have poor options. Chavez found the Army almost by accident, and had found it a true open of security and opportunity and fellowship and respect.
— Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger
Jesus lived in occupied territory, in poverty and misery, and his stories and preaching are all about food, land, liberation from bondage and servitude and get. He preached about providing for those who lacked the most and were considered expendable, as the birds of the air, and yet in Jesus' eyes were where one found the treasure of heaven, here, now, on earth.
— Megan McKenna, The New Stations of the Cross: The Way of the Cross According to Scripture
One of the biggest misconceptions remains that Neil Gaiman spent his youth lurching from bedsit to library and back again, subsisting on a diet of blood-temperature baked beans and the wild leeks he managed to pull from the side of a disused railway track. It is a misconception that he nurtures, whether consciously or otherwise, through omission.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mouth
The homeless dudes on Alameda all have legs any runway model would kill for, and sometimes I think of giving them money, but— I don’t know, I’ve got bills to not pay, and drinks to make people buy for me.
— Kris Kidd, I Can't Feel My Face
Then they start going on about cancer and how organic living is the way forward, totally ignoring how expensive it is to be organic and that there are a lot of people out there grateful if they can afford regular living.
— Lisa O'Donnell, The Death of Bees
My eyes open after my mind. All eyes always do.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
Nobody has to do anything wrong to end up living a life that feels like it’s not their own, all they have to do is take a step back, and hope for the best.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
Or maybe he means in a richer world the begging population is melting away. But no to that too. So maybe, perhaps, he means there aren't many 'human beings' left to look, see, and understand well enough for one to ask and one to give. Everyone busy, running, jumping, there's no time to study one another. But I guess that's bilge and hogwash, slop and sentiment.
— Ray Bradbury
You are put in school to be trained to become exactly what they want you to be: not them, anything but them. They live on a golden island and have the key to the only bridge. Your parents are not millionaires, so it doesn't matter how intelligent you are, you aren't invited to their party. That’s the great shame. The idiots have the gold, and the poor die to give it to them. So you better start to laugh, because this world is one big joke written by the few, at the expense of the masses. Look around you, that feeling your life isn't going anywhere? That’s the feeling that makes you part of the masses.
— Craig  Stone, Deep In The Bin Of Bob
Sleep doesn't come easy when a broken twig conjures images of a hulking mental patient snapping the arms off children, over by the bin.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
Most poverty is a lack of opportunity.
— Adam LiVecchi
His smile is a stranger resting on a haunted face, only coming out for poisons turning him into a ghost.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
He brings the cigarette butt to his mouth and lights up. He breathes in, and coughs; a rattling helicopter with a broken blade crashing into a herd of trombone playing sheep falling off a cliff into a DIY shop with a discount on spanners.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
A celebrity farts, and everyone endures, but the unpopular will be thrased to death.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
If you tempted a poor man with a fortune, who could blame the fellow for taking what he could?
— Sara Sheridan, The Secret Mandarin
Poverty is a state of the mind that was created as a result of unhealthy environmental factors. When you are surrounded with unhealthy environmental factors, you will think poorly, speak poorly, act and behave poorly.
— Uzoma Nnadi
I don’t want to wake up. I can’t feel the cold of life. I can’t feel fear in my dreams. When awake we are green and red bits glowing under a machine, lights turn off and on, and people of science convince themselves they know what’s going on. Backs are patted, hand are shaken. Test, record, collect. They tell us what we already know. We are all dying, dying slow. When awake, there is a feeling of impending doom, and if you can’t feel it, close your eyes, or open them further. When we’re in a box underground, heaven is finally above us, but it’s not in the sky. Heaven is the planet we lived on, and all of the angels are people. Here, in a dream, it’s just me floating in the back of my mind, among parts we don’t fully understand.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
Blobfish, the guy who snapped a hamsters neck, myself, the homeless guy who has never thrown a punch (but has killed a fox) and Dickface, the man obsessed with trees and touching himself in public, follow an arrogant midget into the home of a pale creature I am certain will kill us all, to save the life of an ungrateful bastard parrot called Madness.The temperature drops further.A cold night for heroes.
— Craig  Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
You can't change generational poverty by sitting on your ass. Let's get to work!
— Damen Lopez
Stale beer sticks to wobbling tables. The cigarette machine flashes in the corner, mocking smokers who never have any change on them. There’s no natural light in this pub, so it’s dark and gloomy. The pain on the face of the staff tells its own story: overworked, underpaid, exploited and treated as expendable. I feel at home with them. They’re so scared they will be fired from their terrible jobs, every time I order a beer they ask me if I want any peanuts or crisps, in case between drinks I’ve turned into the dreaded mystery shopper. The air is chewy and weighs heavy on the skin. The fruit machines in the corners don’t make a sound, aware this is the last stop saloon for the drunk few who can’t afford to gamble properly. Everyone here is down to their last pint and pound.
— Craig  Stone, Life Knocks
The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are “those people.” The truth is…we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being “those people”–the ones we don’t trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don’t let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don’t want living next door.
— Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't): Making the Journey from "What Will People Think?" to "I Am Enough"
If I were hungry and friendless today, I would rather take my chances with a saloon-keeper than with the average preacher.
— Eugene V. Debs
The difference between the rich and the poor, is finding true love.
— Anthony Liccione
Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings people like us so close to God. It's the fact that no one is more curious than we are to learn why we are here on earth and what will happen to us in the next world.
— Orhan Pamuk, Snow
We are not bringing Christ to poor communities. He has been active in these communities since the creation of the world, sustaining them, Hebrews 1:3 says, by His powerful Word. Hence, a significant part of working in poor communities involves discovering and appreciating what God has been doing there for a LONG time.
— Steve Corbett, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself
A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.
— Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent 
— Nelson Mandela
Poverty has a way of taking the edge off principles. Hunger can blunt them altogether.
— Paula Brackston, The Midnight Witch
Some people in orthodox churches in Africa take poverty as a path that leads to heaven, making christianity look unattractive.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Illness and death are not the only consequences of the lack of access to water; it also hinders education and economic development. Widespread illness makes countries less productive, more dependent on outside aid, and less able to lift themselves out of poverty. According to the United Nations, one of the main reasons girls do not go to school in sub-Saharan Africa is that they have to spend so much time fetching water from distant wells and carrying it home.
— Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses
By now, with all our modern technology, there should be no poverty left on earth.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Even though he'd been born into a country unshackling itself from its colonial masters, even though he'd lived through nearly twenty years of freedom, nothing much changed for you when you were poor.
— Judy Croome, The Weight of a Feather and other stories
Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?Do they even know I'm HERE?
— Ray Bradbury, Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales
I start to think, 'It's awful being too poor to even buy my own dress for homecoming.' But that's instantly swept away by another thought: 'I'm so lucky that someone cates enough to loan me a dress.
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Full Ride
Honesty is not a virtue, it is a luxury. Most, who struggle to put bread on the table, face this question every day. And hunger wins this game almost every time, beta (son).
— Prashant Chopra, The Eyes that drowned Uyuni
As every slumdweller knew, there were three main ways out of poverty: finding an entrepreneurial niche, as the Husains had found in garbage; politics and corruption, in which Asha placed her hopes; and education.
— Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It "knows" who is to get something and who has to wait.
— Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed
Riches without faith are the greatest poverty.
— Hazrat Ali R.A
It is true that almost everyone in the foothills farmed and hunted, so there were no breadlines, no men holding signs that begged for work and food, no children going door to door, as they did in Atlanta, asking for table scraps. Here, deep in the woods, was a different agony. Babies, the most tenuous, died from poor diet and simple things, like fevers and dehydration. In Georgia, one in seven babies died before their first birthday, and in Alabama it was worse.You could feed your family catfish and jack salmon, poke salad and possum, but medicine took cash money, and the poorest of the poor, blacks and whites, did not have it. Women, black and white, really did smother their babies to save them from slow death, to give a stronger, sounder child a little more, and stories of it swirled round and round until it became myth, because who can live with that much truth.
— Rick Bragg, Ava's Man
The municipality sent water through six Annawadi faucets for ninety minutes in the morning and ninety minutes at night. Shiv Sena men had appropriated the taps, charging usage fees to their neighbors. These water-brokers were resented, but not as much as the renegade World Vision social worker who had collected money from Annawadians for a new tap, then run away with it.
— Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
She was not granted the luxury of forgetting her lower middle-class existence where life hangs by an unseen thread to every hope and where every slash of disappointment shrinks the life further.
— Madhu Vajpayee, Seeking Redemption
Yes, we have to seek redemption! Redemption from the divisive politics based on caste and religion, redemption from the corruption which is eating our lives like termites, redemption from misery of poverty, redemption from the sins of our venal politicians. We need good governance and accountability. An individual has to fight for the things he rightfully deserves. People do not need crutches of any kind if the basic conditions of nation are conducive to their growth. It’s ridiculous; people are first deprived of basic amenities, denied their dues and then offered carrots to benefit the vote bank politics.
— Madhu Vajpayee, Seeking Redemption
The forces of justice had finally come to Annawadi. That the beneficiaries were horses was a source of bemusement to Sunil and the road boys.
— Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
It is true that prosperity has many close friends; poverty, on the other hand, has only distant watchers!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Rich people is people who only cares for themselves, and their money but, poor people doesn't care how much money they have because they have a big heart
— Emanuelle Rivet
Poverty with happiness is not a real poverty
—  richness with unhappiness is not a real richness!
The border between the State of Israel and the occupied Gaza Strip had always reminded him of the line between Tijuana and greater San Diego. There, too, ragged men the color of earth waited with the mystical patience of the very poor on the pleasure of crisply uniformed, well-nourished officials. Some months before, Lucas had come down for the dawn shape-up at the checkpoint, and he had not forgotten the drawn faces in the half-light, the terrible smiles of the weak, straining to make themselves agreeable to the strong.
— Robert  Stone, Damascus Gate
You know what I mean. I'm telling you I was stupid over it. I thought it was about trying so hard to survive that you didn't have the time to be a good parent. Obviously, that's not it. Because you and I, we're both...wealthy in love.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
Racism is both overt and covert. It takes two, closely related forms: individual whites acting against individual blacks, and acts by the total white community against the black community. We call these individual racism and institutional racism. The first consists of overt acts by individuals, which cause death, injury or the violent destruction of property. This type can be recorded by television cameras; it can frequently be observed in the process of commission. The second type is less overt, far more subtle, less identifiable in terms of specific individuals committing the acts. But it is no less destructive of human life. The second type originates in the operation of established and respected forces in the society, and thus receives far less public condemnation than the first type. When white terrorists bomb a black church and kill five black children, that is an act of individual racism, widely deplored by most segments of the society. But when in that same city - Birmingham, Alabama - five hundred black babies die each year because of the lack of proper food, shelter and medical facilities, and thousands more are destroyed and maimed physically, emotionally and intellectually because of conditions of poverty and discrimination in the black community, that is a function of institutional racism. When a black family moves into a home in a white neighborhood and is stoned, burned or routed out, they are victims of an overt act of individual racism which many people will condemn - at least in words. But it is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it.
— Stokely Carmichael, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation
Half of the world population is dying from poverty and hunger and still you think you are not rich enough.
— M.F. Moonzajer
[If] a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists.
— Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight
Nonetheless, the fact remains; he had hope in a better world he could not yet see that overwhelmed the cries of "you can't" or "you won't" or "why bother." More than anything else, mastering that faith, on cue, is what separated him from his peers, and distinguishes him from so many people in these literal, sophisticated times. It has made all the difference.
— Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
There’s a very fine line between being broke and being humble.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Poverty scrapes these homes down until they all look the same, and they all have in common the absence of things that ought to be there. I might as well have been at one place all my life.
— Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
Juice is a poor man’s dessert.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Every time I look at my wallet; I don’t care how much money is there, I just want to know, does it make for this time food?
— M.F. Moonzajer
Poverty is being single.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Pursue money while you're alive, so that poverty will not pursue you when you're old.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Some secret of nurture withered a generation or two before I arrived, if it had ever existed before among the poor, marginalized people on the edges of Europe from whom I descend. Both my parents grew up with a deep sense of poverty that was mostly emotional but that they imagined as material long after they clambered into the middle class, and so they were more like a pair of rivalrous older siblings than parents who see their children as extensions of themselves and their hopes. They were stuck in separateness.I didn't realize anything was odd until I was already on my own and found out that not everyone's parents cut them off financially as soon as the law allowed. I tried to leave home unsuccessfully at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and did so successfully at seventeen, heading off to another country, as far away as I could go, and once I got there I realized I was more on my own than I had anticipated: I was henceforth entirely repsonsible for myself and thus began a few years of poverty.
— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
When it was cooler, Trazada made a simple meal of sausage, cheese, and bread. She had schooled herself to wait dinner until hunger urged her to eat; it gave seasoning to poor food that no spice could furnish.("The Generalissimo's Butterfly")
— Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Cautionary Tales
Pope John Paul II once said as well, “Lebanon is a message more than it is a country.” Now this diversity has turned into fragmentation and the richness into poverty, awaiting a miraculous remedy.
— Rami Ollaik, The Bees Road
She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia gone mad through contact with Hamlet's madness, but because she had slept in some stable loft.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Poverty must be eliminated or else the honour of humanity will vanish!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Peanut butter is a poor man’s marmalade.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I've seen poverty & I can assure you that it's 'too dark' (Black) in colour.
— Cedric Namedi Mathuthe
HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man?DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.
— George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebody, to anybody. I know that even as the words of George Wallace rang through my Alabama, the black family who lived down the dirt road from our house sent fresh-picked corn and other food to the poor white lady and her three sons, because they knew their daddy had run off, because hungry does not have a color.
— Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin'
Shyness is a luxury reserved for those who are above the poverty line. To a beggar, being shy is deadly.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Democracy is supposed to be ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. Capitalism is ‘of the capitalist, for the capitalist’. Period.
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
Honey, it isn’t democracy that runs this country. Capitalism rules. It does no good to reason with the capitalists or their politicians. This is a class war. We have to stir up the American people, the lower class. Some of the better-off lower class do show some sympathy for us when they’re smacked with the facts. And when they voice themselves collectively, good things happen.” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash
Poverty is restriction and as such, it is the greatest injustice you can perpetrate upon yourself.
— Stuart Wilde, The Trick to Money Is Having Some
Charity is salt in the wound. It is painful. The state gives charity with the bitter hatred of a victim to his blackmailer. The receiver of free money is subjected to harassment, insult, and profound humiliation. Newspapers are enlisted to heap scorn on the arrogant bastards who choose to beg instead of starve or let their children starve. It is made clear that the poor seek charity as a great and sordid chicanery in which they delight. And there are some who do. As there are people who take delight in sticking hot needles deep into their abdomens, swallow pieces of broken bottles. A special taste. Speaking for humanity in general, the poor accept charity with a shame and loss of self-respect that is truly pitiful.
— Mario Puzo, The Fortunate Pilgrim
I am a citizen of this country,” I declare, “and Mr. Mayor, tonight I will be a citizen of this city when I put my shoes under my bed. The courageous men, women and children who are with me (blocked from crossing the bridge into NYC) are also citizens of this country and will be sleeping near their shoes too. I want them with me tonight, here, in the city of New York. We are all American citizens.” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash
The Andrians were the first of the islanders to refuse Themistocles' demand for money. He had put it to them that they would be unable to avoid paying, because the Athenians had the support of two powerful deities, one called Persuasion and the other Compulsion.The Andrians had replied that Athens was lucky to have two such useful gods, who were obviously responsible for her wealth and greatness; unfortunately, they themselves, in their small & inadequate land, had two utterly useless deities, who refused to leave the island and insisted on staying; and their names were Poverty and Inability.
— Herodotus, The Histories
What the hell’s the matter with you men? Are you cowards as well as stupid? You boys make me sick. I’m done with you. You hear me? I want you to go back to your places now and stay with your children until I say you’re needed.“Tell your wives and your older children to bring with them dish pans and cooking pots. Tell them to bring their stirring spoons and ladles. Tell them to carry a mop over their shoulders. We’re goin’ to march on that mine and we’re going to stand guard to see that no scabs are allowed in. Do you hear me?” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
I also remember that my father was one of the people who voted to get the Dauntless out of the factionless sector of the city. He said the poor didn’t need policing; they needed help, and we could give it to them. But I would rather not mention that now, or here. It’s one of the many things Erudite gives as evidence of Abnegation’s incompetence.
— Veronica Roth, Divergent
The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.
— Sri Aurobindo
Go home now,” says I. “Keep away from the saloons. Save your money. You are going to need it.”“What are we going to need it for?” asks a voice from the crowd.“For guns and ammunition,” says I.
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
To the RKO motion picture camera at her 100th birthday party: “I pray for the day when working men and women are able to earn a fair share of the wealth they produce in a capitalist system, a day when all Americans are able to enjoy the freedom, rights and opportunities guaranteed them by the Constitution of the United States of America.” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
Turning back to the crowd I say, “I am duty bound to make this plea, but I want to say, with all due respect to the governor here, that I doubt seriously that he will do — cannot do — anything. And for the reason that he is owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the capitalists who placed him here in this building.” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
That’s got to stop,” says I. “The idea of any blood-thirsty pirate (Mexican President Diaz) sitting on a throne and reaching across the border to tromp on our Constitution makes my blood boil.” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
Those who were raised in poverty and have been successful to overcome the shame of it, understands the hardship of those who are left behind.
— Ellen J. Barrier
I go back to the union man and say, “Sir, this is a house of God, not a proper place for a union meeting. I have some things to say today that God would not want to hear in His own house. Boys, I want you to get up, every one of you, and go across the road. I want you to sit down on the hillside over there and wait for me to speak to you.
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
What do you see out there?” I ask. “Pittsburgh,” he replies. Now I laugh. “No, young man. What you see is hell with the lid taken off.” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
Governments neither help us to get out of poverty and hunger, nor let us die. It is time that we must pick one.
— M.F. Moonzajer
No matter what they say in the conferences and symposiums about poverty and hunger in the world. At the end, they are the first one forgetting us.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Life is an extended camping trip. With a leaky, inferior tent one runs no more risk of rain than anyone else; but if it does rain, the person in the cheap tent chances soaking in his sleeping bag, and possibly dying of hypothermia.
— William T. Vollmann, Poor People
We have written too many books about love and so few about hunger and poverty
—  that is why we need to wake up and leave stupidity behind.
If capitalist realism is so seamless, and if current forms of resistance are so hopeless and impotent, where can an effective challenge come from? A moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing the ways in which it leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine and war can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated easily painted as naive utopianism. Capitalist realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism's ostensible 'realism' turns out to be nothing of the sort.
— Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Well, honey, it’s capitalism that brings out the meanness and greed,” says I. “Our founding fathers did a decent job of framing our democracy. They wrote the Constitution and added a Bill of Rights that intended for people of all classes to enjoy the freedoms the Constitution offers. But capitalism came along without a constitution or a bill of rights and the industrialists grabbed unrestricted power. The capitalists wrote their own ‘Declaration of Capitalism’.” — Mother Jones
— Jerry Ash, Hellraiser—Mother Jones: An Historical Novel
You can't change things. That's life. Poor stays poor, rich says rich, and those two, they will never meet.
— Antonia Michaelis, The Storyteller
One of the great failings of the American education system (in our view) is that young people can graduate from university without any understanding of poverty at home or abroad.
— Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have the more free you are. Poverty for us is a freedom. It is not mortification, a penance. It is joyful freedom. There is no television here, no this, no that. But we are perfectly happy.
— Mother Teresa
Many skills, as every successful entrepreneur knows, cannot be taught in school. They require doing. Sometimes a life of doing. And where money-making is concerned, nothing compresses the time frame needed to leap from my-shit-just-sits-there-until-it-rains poverty to which-of-my-toilets-shall-I-use affluence like an apprenticeship with someone who already has the angles all figured out.
— Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
But then it is easy, too easy, to sermonize about the dangers of paternalism and the need to take responsibility for our own lives, from the comfort of our couch in our safe and sanitary home. Aren't we, those who live in the rich world, the constant beneficiaries of a paternalism now so thoroughly embedded into the system that we hardly notice it?
— Abhijit V. Banerjee, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty
Our possessions are not ours- God has given them to us to cultivate, that we may make them fruitful and profitable in His Service, and so doing we shall please Him.
— Francis de Sales
World, they have taken the small children like butterflies and thrown them, beating their wings, into the fire--
— Nelly Sachs
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
Hungry people are always thinking about food
—  poor people are always thinking about wealth. Obsessive thinking can kill your dreams!
The dilemma is, in the United States, each penniless citizen believes that, with luck, he might become a millionaire; and so doesn't want to put restraints on "robber barons"-he might become one one day!
— Joyce Carol Oates, The Accursed
Be patient, you are in good company. Our Lord Himself, our Lady, the apostles, and countless saints, both men and women, have been poor.
— Francis de Sales