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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:

That’s when we can ensure a ‘full plate’ of opportunities to young talents in emerging economies and help eradicate poverty due to lack of job opportunities

Denise Ajayi-Williams

One of the girls who was among my best friends came from a poverty-stricken home. Her family was delightful and I used to wonder how such things could happen...

Frances Perkins A Woman Unafraid (1993)

We are trying to end poverty in the world by 2030 and we’re going to focus especially on the well-being of the bottom 40 per cent of every country.

Jim Yong Kim

I've a one track mind, sir. Poverty and gloom. Never a joyous picture of mine you'll see.Always gloom. I never do a jolly picture.

L. S. Lowry

...Most of the collective problems that confront citizens (poverty, environmental degradation, war and terrorism, etc.) cannot be addressed locally.

Talal Asad

One must never despise the poor, because this contempt falls on God.

John Vianney Attributed

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

Augustine of Hippo Disputed

Contentment is natural wealth; luxury, artificial poverty.

Socrates Attributed

Education is not a way to escape poverty, it is a way of fighting it.

Julius Nyerere Attributed

It does not depend upon us to avoid poverty, but it does depend upon us to make that poverty respected.

Voltaire Attributed A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1902)

Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty.

Doris Day Misattributed

Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.

Edwin Percy Whipple Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Poverty is the worst kind of violence.

Mahatma Gandhi Disputed

Real sorrow is almost as difficult to discover as real poverty. An instinctive delicacy hides the rays of the one and the wounds of the other.

Sophie Swetchine Attributed Forty Thousand Quotations (1917)

Widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot long endure side by side in a democracy

Thomas Jefferson Misattributed

The man that mates wi’ Poverty
An’ clasps her tae his banes,
Will faither lean an’ lively thochts,
A host o’ eident weans.

Helen Cruickshank Attributed

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