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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:

Liberals fought poverty and poverty won.

Ronald Reagan The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America (2004)

Malaysia fortunately has more than enough resources and wealth to address the issue of poverty. Therefore there is no excuse to not prioritize the problem at hand.

Anwar Ibrahim Anwar Ibrahim (2020)

The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich Ponkapog Papers (1903)

O blissful poverty!
Nature, too partial! to thy lot assigns
Health, freedom, innocence, and downy peace,
Her real goods: and only mocks the great
With empty pageantries!

Elijah Fenton Mariamne: A Tragedy (1723)

If we stop thinking of the poor as victims or as a burden and start recognizing them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity can open up.

C. K. Prahalad

We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Earth had always operated on a continuous-growth model that requires a poverty class. Sustainable models require productive work by all members and are quite different.

Sheri S. Tepper The Margarets (2007)

Poverty is poison. Poverty is a pain. We need to rise together and make concerted efforts to reduce poverty and make this world a happy place to live in.

Amjad Saqib

The issue therefore in a capitalist democracy resolves itself into this: either poverty will use democracy to win the struggle against property, or property, in fear of poverty, will destroy democracy.

Aneurin Bevan In Place of Fear (1952)

The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Democrats let the poor be corrupt, too.

Oscar Levant

Poverty is an apocalypse in slow motion, inexorable and generational.

Mikki Kendall Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot (2020)

Poverty is not the root ("rut") cause of crime.

Rush Limbaugh

If printing money would end poverty, printing diplomas would end stupidity.

Javier Milei

But why does the Pd leave peace, work, the fight against poverty to others?

Rosy Bindi

Religious poverty is little known and also less observed.

Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi

Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division, and from the antagonism between poor and rich, means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.

Joseph Stalin

Many individuals are capable of creating wealth but are excluded from the job market by minimum wage and licensing laws. Much poverty can be alleviated by allowing people to create wealth at whatever level they can and ‘work their way up.’

Mary Ruwart Healing Our World: The Other Piece of the Puzzle (1993)

The developed world needs to feel that these huge levels of poverty (are) a threat to their own security. When their interests are at risk, money can be found.

Graça Machel West must help Africa on poverty, education: Machel (2009)

As long as we give room for domination and the dominators, there will be worries and worried people. Poverty and |pestilence will live eternally in the country

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

So long as production is left to the uncontrolled decisions of private individuals, conducted, guided and inspired by the motive of profit, so long will Poverty, Insecurity and Injustice continue.

Hugh Gaitskell

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