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We should refuse to tolerate poverty as a social institution not because the poor are the salt of the earth, but because 'the poor in a lump are bad'.

— George Bernard Shaw The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism (1928)

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Poverty

More quotes by George Bernard Shaw

Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.

Getting Married (1908)

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

Saint Joan (1923)

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who havnt and dont.

The Apple Cart (1928)

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The Philanderer (1893)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

It is better to be poor and walk in integrity than to be stupid and speak lies.

Solomon

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

Leo Tolstoy

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: George Bernard Shaw (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.