Quotes about Poverty

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.

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

There can no longer be anyone too poor to vote.

Jesus' disciples are not people lacking resources, but they are poor because they belong to this people under the oppressive and demoralizing dominion of a foreign power (e.g., Lk 6:20). They are indeed thus poor in spirit (Mt 5:3). Jesus does not focus on a concern for the poor in the sense of people who lacked resources.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself. Inaugural Adress, January 20, 1961

Education is the key to opportunity. It's a ticket out of poverty.

The poorest person on earth is the person without faith.

Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.

God comes to the hungry in the form of food.