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Poverty Quotes

Juvenal has the most entries, with Solomon, Shakespeare, Ali and the Nigerian politician Peter Obi after him. The older sourced material is blunt. Shaw’s Major Barbara (1905) calls poverty the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes, and Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village (1770) has a line addressed to poetry: “that found’st me poor at first, and keep’st me so.” Mark Twain gets in a joke in 1869, saying that a man is fast rising from affluence to poverty.

Three entries are flagged. “Poverty is the worst kind of violence” is credited to Gandhi as disputed. A passage on love having hands to help others is credited to Augustine, also disputed. “Widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot long endure side by side in a democracy” is credited to Thomas Jefferson and flagged misattributed.

Random quote on Poverty

Most quoted on poverty:

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

Bill Gates

"If you love me, then prepare yourself for poverty. Poverty comes swifter to the one who loves me than a flood to its destination."

Muhammad

Poverty needs no plan. It needs no one to aid it, because it is bold and ruthless.

Napoleon Hill

This, Mr. Emmot, is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness.

David Lloyd George

Millions of people throughout the world are striving to put an end to poverty.

Andrei Sakharov Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968)

Poverty was scorned,
Fruitful of warriors; and from all the world
Came that which ruins nations.

Lucan

Wealth is no mark of God's favour. Poverty is no mark of God's displeasure.

J. C. Ryle Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. Luke (1858)

In Italy, poverty has decreased, it seems paradoxical and countercurrent, but these are the statistics. Feel free to make noise but these are the statistics.

Renato Brunetta

My story is a typical grass to grace and from poverty to financial independence or success. Typically, mine is just from zero to hero, a nobody to somebody.

Deloris Frimpong Manso

Poverty is a problem that all of us feel sorry about. Through harmony we have to work together for the good of this world.

Francis Leo Braganza

Poverty is not the fault of the poor. It is the fault of a system that allows idleness at the top and starvation at the bottom.

Elizabeth McCombs

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

Muhammad Ali

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)

This mournful truth is ev'rywhere confessed —
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed.

Samuel Johnson London: A Poem (1738)

Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes the heart; the first may charm like music, but the second alarms like a knell.

Thomas Paine The Case of the Officers of Excise (1772)

You must cultivate poverty of spirit. Blessed are the meek. She didn’t go on to say anything about inheriting the earth.

Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)

The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world, to feel that one’s desire
Is too difficult to tell from despair.

Wallace Stevens Transport to Summer (1947)

In general, Russia suffers from a frightening poverty in the sphere of facts and a frightening wealth of all types of arguments.

Anton Chekhov

There are those... who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their lot.

Aga Khan IV

Take patience as your pillow, hug poverty, discard lusts, oppose your desires and know that you are seen by God, so look at how you are.

Muhammad al-Taqi

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