Quotes about Poverty

Poverty possesses this disease; through want it teaches a man evil.

The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want.

There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

I want poverty to end in tomorrow's Pakistan. I want every girl in Pakistan to go to school.

If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.

There is nothing more sickening than talking about poverty over a fancy dinner.

Dom Helder Camara, a twentieth-century bishop in Brazil, said, "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist.

After all, what is crazier: one person owning the same amount of money as the combined economies of twenty-three countries, or suggesting that if we shared, there would be enough for everyone?

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. . . Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships.

And in a very special way, as Jesus says in Matthew 25:40, in the least of these, we find Jesus in disguise. Perhaps we are just as likely to encounter God over the dinner table or in the slums or in the streets as in a giant auditorium. Of course, suggesting that God doesn't need these million-dollar megacathedrals is the sort of thing that gets you in big trouble.