Quotes about Poverty

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

A soul who loves Jesus Christ desires to be treated the way Christ was treated-desires to be poor, despised, and humiliated.

When people gain income, they gain choice, and that is fundamental to dignity.

The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.

Here we see how the plantation, which does not create employment for its inhabitants, nevertheless does provide stable employment to a whole class of academics, social workers and bureaucrats. The employment is stable because the plantation is permanent; there are no plans for it to ever be dismantled. The "war against poverty" is a perpetual fight in which poverty always wins because the game is rigged and the combatants are not fighting to win, only to hold the line.

Pine Ridge reservation, White Face told me, is one of the largest reservations in the country, and the poorest. Like other reservations, it is run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), an agency of the federal government. While in theory the native Indians are separate nations, in reality they are, as the Supreme Court once termed them, "dependent nations"—dependent on the government through the BIA.

Somehow I had come to believe that because a person is in need, they are candidates for sympathy, not just charity. It was not that I wanted to buy her groceries, the government was already doing that. I wanted to buy her dignity. And yet, by judging her, I was the one taking her dignity away.

The person who believes the sum of his morality involves gay marriage and abortion alone, and neglects health care and world trade and the environment and loving his neighbor and feeding the poor is, by definition, a theological liberal, because he takes what he wants from Scripture and ignores the rest.

is no disgrace to be poor. The laborer who serves Christ faithfully is far more honorable in God's eyes than the nobleman who serves sin.

The family of Abraham will no longer feel temptations, and the family of Job will not feel afflictions. The family of David will no longer mourn loss and death, the family of Paul will not feel thorns in the flesh, and the family of Lazarus will no longer be afflicted by poverty and sores.

Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance

Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.