Quotes about Poverty
The war against hunger is truly mankind's war of liberation.
— John F. Kennedy
The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two; but inspiration will cause them to rise out of their misery. If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich; prove it by getting rich yourself.
— Napoleon Hill
If you want riches, you must refuse to accept any circumstance that leads toward poverty.
— Napoleon Hill
Poverty needs no plan. It needs no one to aid it, because it is bold and ruthless. Riches are shy and timid. They have to be attracted.
— Napoleon Hill
True it is that covetousness is rich, modesty starves.
— John Milton
When I was growing up in Alabama in the '50s, even though we were poor and the laws were against blacks, we still had a sense of morality.
— Jesse Lee Peterson
It comforts everybody to think of all Negroes as dirt poor, and to regard those who were not, who earned good money and kept it, as some kind of shameful miracle. White people liked that idea because Negroes with money and sense made them nervous. Colored people liked it because, in those days, they trusted poverty, believed it was a virtue and a sure sign of honesty. Too much money had a whiff of evil and somebody else's blood.
— Toni Morrison
After five years of a sad and disgruntled marriage BoyBoy took off. During the time they were together he was very much preoccupied with other women and not home much. He did whatever he could that he liked, and he liked womanizing best, drinking second, and abusing Eva third. When he left in November, Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three beets, and no idea of what or how to feel.
— Toni Morrison
Generational sins, hereditary diseases and systemic poverty are not a part of our royal status. Yet in reality, trespassing demonic spirits oftentimes stymie the full benefits of our inheritance.
— Kris Vallotton
The Bible's message for women doesn't depend on ideal circumstances, but applies fully to those who live in the brutal outskirts of society where poverty engulfs, education is nonexistent, women's bodies are ravaged, and lives are in constant peril simply because they are female.
— Carolyn Custis James
Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.
— George Bernard Shaw
I believe that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches as she does in purple and fine linen.
— Charles Dickens