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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:

Q:: What efforts is the REA making to address power poverty?

Ahmad Salihijo Ahmad

“How can you whitewash poverty?”

Dambudzo Marechera

Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking.

P. J. O'Rourke Eat the Rich (1999)

Of course, for a lot of people, death was a welcome change. Grinding poverty takes the edge off most things, including life.

Tom Baker Who On Earth is Tom Baker? (1997)

A clergyman who engages in business, and who rises from poverty to wealth, and from obscurity to a high position, avoid as you would the plague.

Jerome

Value your honor as you value your life. Poverty with honor is preferable to wealth with dishonor.

Manuel L. Quezon

There is nothing divine about poverty. It is a man-made problem that can be eliminated with clearly thought out social and economic policies.

Bola Tinubu

Climate change is exacerbated by poverty, and this sort of poverty mostly wears a woman’s face.

Ifeoma Malo

“War had the effect of encouraging people to try to stay alive. Poverty, too. Survival was simply too hard-won to be given up lightly.”

Aminatta Forna

Within the framework of capitalism it is impossible to solve the challenges of fighting against poverty, misery, exploitation and inequality.

Hugo Chávez

This "Clash of Civilizations" has led to a "Clash of Religions", leading in turn to war, terror and extreme poverty.

Begum Aga Khan

Under our mission to give back, our three areas of focus are education, poverty eradication and empowerment.

Idia Aisien

Women are forgotten individuals with disproportionate level of income due to poverty and deprivation.

Dzodzi Tsikata

I think Africa in general will heal the wounds of poverty when mothers become the caretakers of our governments.

Edith Nawakwi

We can't end poverty if we fail to save the lives of our world's mothers.

Liya Kebede

“I think that tech might be our way out of poverty.” On the role of technology in transforming economic futures in Africa.

Blessing Abeng

We are too few to be poor and we can eradicate poverty.

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah

We can't wait for solutions to end poverty – we need action NOW.

John Roger Stephens

He was a very inferior farmer when he first begun,… and he is now fast rising from affluence to poverty.

Mark Twain Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's Farm: Quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.

Thomas Jefferson

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