2,719 Quotes About Poverty

Money isn’t everything.’‘The only people who say that are people who have enough money to pay the rent.

And then I sez—‘How is anybody a-goin’ to live pattern lives, when they are a-starvin' to death? And how is anybody a-goin’ to enjoy religion when they are a-chokin’?

Though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does not take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies.

Money cannot eradicate poverty, only education can.

Poverty said the same thing, century after century, but in different kinds of sentences.

My mother often said, as long as a person is happy at work, then poverty is nothing to be ashamed of.

How the prisoner and the immigrant are treated by the government, how the poor are treated and those without influence: this is secretly how the government would like to treat us all.

Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as "the blessing" — like so many mission trips to help "those less fortunate than ourselves" — can easily descend into a blend of  benevolence and paternalism. We can start to see the "poor" as supporting characters in a big story about how noble, selfless, and helpful we are.

We have been living through a time of sorrow. Our seed remains seed. Our nostrils are dusty.