Quotes & Sayings About Helping The Poor

Only by helping yourself first can you help the poor. Only by changing yourself first, can you change their condition. You achieve this by first removing from your mind any thoughts of poverty, for to think of something is to invoke it. — Stephen Richards

When we start helping the weak and the poor to rise everyone will begin to change. Those who have power and riches will start to become more humble, and those who are rising up will leave behind their need to be victims, their need to be angry or depressed ... This is the spirituality of life, that helps people to rise up and take their place. It is not a spirituality of death. Jesus wants those who have been crushed to rise up and those who have power to discover that there is another road, a road of sharing and compassion. — Jean Vanier

Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world. And the biggest gas reserves in this hemisphere, the eighth in the world. Venezuela was a U.S. oil colony. All of our oil was going up to the north, and the gas was being used by the U.S. and not by us. Now we are diversifying. Our oil is helping the poor. — Hugo Chavez

A joyful heart, keeping a positive mind, helping those in despair ... all leads to the roads building a better you! — Timothy Pina

The best way to help the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their own poverty. — Benjamin Franklin

When we serve the poor and the sick we serve Jesus. We must not fail to help our neighbors, because in them we serve Jesus. — Rose Of Lima

Do we ignore the needy
to spite the greedy?
Or share and defend
despite those who pretend? — Richelle E. Goodrich

A properly designed tax system can strike a balance between helping the poor and, at the same time, giving people the incentive to work. — Eric Maskin

If you really want to help the poor, help the rich. They're the ones who will invest, build more factories, create more jobs. — William E. Simon

Lord, help us to recognize you in the sick, poor and suffering. — Pope Francis

Some of the homes that have been built in the last 10 years just appall me. Why do humans need huge homes? I was born poor and I didn't know you bought clothes at anything but the Goodwill until I went to college. Some of our mentality about what it means to have a good life is, I think, not going to help us in the next 50 years. We have to think through how to choose a meaningful life where we're helping one another in ways that really help the Earth. — Elinor Ostrom

Truth is ... we all will die someday. None of our days are promised in anyway. But by choosing to live great, helping others along our way ... will help brighten humanity each and everyday! — Timothy Pina

You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. — Abraham Lincoln

Help, master, help! here's a fish hangs in the net, like a poor man's right in the law; 'twill hardly come out. — William Shakespeare

Government relief tends constantly to get out of hand. And even when it is kept within reasonable bounds it tends to reduce the incentives to work and to save both of those who receive it and of those who are forced to pay it. It may be said, in fact, that practically every measure that governments take with the ostensible object of 'helping the poor' has the long-run effect of doing the opposite. — Henry Hazlitt

The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them. — Maria Montessori

Hadrian shook his head and sighed. "Why do you have to make everything so difficult? They're probably not bad people - just poor. You know, taking what they need to buy a loaf of bread to feed their family. Can you begrudge them that? Winter is coming and times are hard." He nodded his head in the direction of the thieves. "Right?"
"I ain't got no family," flat-nose replied. "I spend most of my coin on drink."
"You're not helping," Hadrian said. — Michael J. Sullivan

The welfare state and its funding are at the center of current political debate in the United States. Today, the country is divided on whether or not the federal government should deliver regulations covering social provisions.
...
The United States has a long tradition of welfare programs starting in the early days of the new republic in 1776. Payments to the poor, to civil war veterans, or to those who were "unable to work due to their age or physical health" were common. Attempts to reform the law helping the poor and unemployed to get work have a long history, as do the fights against abuses of the same system. — Werner Neff

Of course many southern whites did switch from voting Democrat to voting Republican, helping the GOP become the majority party in the South, as the Democrats once were. But remember that racism declined sharply in the South during the second half of the twentieth century. There is quite literally a mountain of scholarly data that documents this. And this was the very period of GOP ascendancy. So as the South became less racist, it became more Republican. I provide evidence in this book to show that southern whites became Republican not for racist motives but for economic ones. The most racist poor whites never left the Democratic Party; they remained loyal to the party of racism until they died. In this sense, the data show that racism slowed the movement of whites toward the Republicans. — Dinesh D'Souza

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self-righteous, bullying laziness. — Penn Jillette

I define myself by helping others. This is what I do.
Those people who want me to abandon my husband are asking me to put myself first and to judge him. The poor man has been judged unfairly by others. Why would I abandon him in his greatest need? — Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker

Help the helpless. Help the poor. Help the needy. Help the orphan. Be the joy for they that suffer in latent. They might not have money to repay you. They might not be able to offer an equal returns of service, but, the inner peace which they may get in their spirit for a moment shall be an awesome lifetime blessings to your body and spirit — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Polak, a psychiatrist, has applied a behavioral and anthropological approach to alleviating poverty, developed by studying people in their natural surroundings. He argues that there are three mythic solutions to poverty eradication: donations, national economic growth, and big businesses. Instead, he advocates helping the poor earn money through their own efforts of developing low-cost tools that are effective and profitable. — Amy Lockwood

Jesus refers to the poor over and over again. There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that call upon us to respond to the needs of the poor. And yet, I find that when Christians talked about values in this last election that was not on the agenda, that was not a concern. If you were to get the voter guide of the Christian Coalition, that does not rate. They talk more about tax cuts for people who are wealthy than they do about helping poor people who are in desperate straits. — Tony Campolo

Some whites, who had never really understood, were offended by this sudden death of their role as the "good white leading the poor black out of the jungle." Many of these were among the saddest people of our time, good-hearted whites who had dedicated themselves to helping black people become imitation whites, to "bringing them up to our level," without ever realizing what a deep insult this attitude can be. — John Howard Griffin

We're called to speak to people to whom we often don't feel like speaking; to refrain from surrounding ourselves with people "just like us," whose thoughts, ideas, and actions we can more or less manage and control; to share not just with the poor, but with the rich, the mediocre, the irritating, the Republicans, the Democrats, because we never know who the poor are. We never know whose heart is hemorrhaging. We never know who needs a kind work, a smile, a helping hand. — Heather King

Often when people think of social involvement, they think of providing something that will meet people's needs in some way. We will do something for the poor. We will provide for them food, furniture, help, education, skills, or whatever. These can all be good starting points. But we need to go further. Poverty is about marginalization and powerlessness. And some forms of charitable intervention can leave people marginalized. They can reinforce a sense of powerlessness. Something is done for the poor. They remain passive. They are not becoming contributors to society. They become more dependent on others. So social involvement is more than presenting people with solutions. Good social involvement is helping people to find their own solutions. We want people to be proactive in their lives and to regain their God-given dignity as human beings made to contribute to community life. So at the heart of good social action is the participation of those in — Tim Chester

There's a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can't make any bread helping the poor. — Lenny Bruce

When enlightened people are so poor that they cannot help others, if they speak a word to awaken the confused or to resolve a problem, there is also boundless merit in that. — Zicheng Hong

She bent down and reached around his trim waist to grab the handcuffs. A bit of a compromising position, given the state of her thoughts, but she had to help the poor guy out before his nose froze off. "There's a saying here in Switzerland. To be a fool at the right time is an art." She caught his eye before continuing with the knot. "You better hush, now."
"Well, there's a saying in the US, too. Imagination is worse than the truth. I have a real vivid imagination, and you bent over me like this is not helping. — Melinda Dozier

The heart of a Christian, who believes and feels, cannot pass the hardships and deprivations of the poor without helping them. — Louis Guanella

Poverty alleviation occurs when the power of Christ's resurrection reconciles our key relationships through the transformation of both individual lives and local, national, and international systems. — Brian Fikkert

We regard the minimum wage rate as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books. The government first provides schools in which many young people, disproportionately black, are educated so poorly that they do not have the skills that would enable them to get good wages. It then penalizes them a second time by preventing them from offering to work for low wages as a means of inducing employers to give them on-the-job training. All this is in the name of helping the poor. — Milton Friedman

Look at it this way - before any of this wood became parts of the shelves or the desk or the chair, all of it was in pieces - just pieces of wood. But the wood was full of potential. It could be shaped into anything that a carpenter wanted it to be shaped into, turning it into a beautiful finished product. Now, not all carpenters are equal in skill - you know that. If a piece of wood is shaped by a poor carpenter, the finished product will be lacking somehow, in some way.
But if that wood is shaped by a master carpenter, then that piece will fit into this world precisely as it's supposed to fit, whether it be a desktop or a cabinet shelf or a doorstop. And the way that I work wood is the way I try to work with people - with love and attention and caring - so that the wood and the people can reach their potential. And if someone lets you teach them, and is open to what you have to teach, then how can you go wrong? — Tom Walsh

Welfare mostly subsidizes people in poverty, helping few escape from it. In their hearts, most people who are poor would like to be rich, or at least self-sustaining, but this president never talks about how they might achieve that goal. Instead, he criticizes those who made the right choices and now enjoy the fruits of their labor. Rather than use successful people as examples for the poor to follow, the president seeks to punish the rich with higher taxes and more regulations on their businesses. — Cal Thomas

Maybe we can combine 2 things that everybody loves. Helping out the poor and blow jobs. — Joe Rogan

In the 50 years I've spent helping people to overcome illness, disability and disease, it has become crystal clear that poor bowel management lies at the root of most peoples' health problems. — Bernard Jensen

Peace is a culture that we create by putting it in the curriculum for young people, through creating this next generation where young people get a chance to go across borders, across cultures, to learn more about each other's life, to create a global community, learn about opportunities for helping others. It's investing in peace and tolerance training, ending the gap between rich and poor. — Craig Kielburger

And that's when things get messy. When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with the folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity. One of my friends has a shirt marked with the words of late Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara: "When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist." Charity wins awards and applause but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for living out of love that disrupts the social order that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them. — Shane Claiborne

Any Church community, if it thinks it can comfortably go its own way without creative concern and effective cooperation in helping the poor to live with dignity and reaching out to everyone, will also risk breaking down, — Pope Francis

The entire life we have has it's real meaning in giving! He who least knows the real value of giving that can leave a distinctive footprint least knows what the essence of life is about — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Praying to God involves both us and God. God wants us to participate in what he is doing, and for sure one of the main ways we participate in what he is doing is by prayer. We can also participate in what he is doing by feeding the hungry and helping the poor and caring for the sick and giving of our resources to those who have little. God wants us to partner with him. So there is a paradox at work, and a mystery. On the one hand, the Bible says that apart from God we can do nothing. And yet, on the other hand, God invites us to do some things with him. This is at the heart of the mystery of prayer. God wants us to use our faith and to pray. But we can focus so much on the importance of our faith and our prayers that we forget about God and think it is our faith and our prayers that perform the miracle, rather than the God to whom we pray and in whom we have faith as we pray. — Eric Metaxas

Lord I thank you for the timely provisions — Lailah Gifty Akita

Emma this is not a joke. Look at your hands! They're ... they're ... wrinkled!"
"Yes that's because-"
"No way. I'm not going down for this. This isn't my fault."
"Toraf-"
"Galen will find some way to blame me though. He always does. 'You wouldn't have gotten caught if you didn't swim so close to that boat, tadpole.' No it couldn't be the humans fault for fishing in the first place-"
"Toraf."
"Or how about. 'Maybe if you'd stop trying to kiss my sister, she'd stop bashing your head with a rock.' How does my kissing her have anything to do with her bashing my head with a rock? If you ask me, it's just a result of poor parenting-"
"Toraf."
"Oh and my favorite: 'If you play with a lionfish, you're going to get pricked.' I wasn't playing with it! I was just helping it swim faster by grabbing its fins-"
"TOR-AF."
He stops pacing along the water, even seems to remember that I exist. "Yes, Emma? What were you saying? — Anna Banks

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important. — Bill Gates

Yes, helping the poor helps keep them stuck in poverty. As Jesus said, 'Tough love thy neighbor as thyself, get your own loaves and fishes.'
Stephen Colbert — Stephen Colbert

If you want to help the poor, don't be poor — Ann Wilson

In fact the Guild, he liked to think, practiced the ultimate democracy. You didn't need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people. — Terry Pratchett

This was the first time I had come face-to-face with the other side of fundamentalism. The fundamentalism that I saw in my neighborhood was sexist and misogynistic and small-minded, but it wasn't violent. It was giving and loving and brotherly. It was about helping the poor, and since everybody was poor, that meant everybody helping everybody. There wasn't the kind of urban meanness you find in many American cities. It was as if a farm community had been transplanted to the city. — Richard Engel

128. We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work. — Pope Francis

The underprivileged are byproduct of society's material progress. — Pawan Mishra

Those who help the poor the most also hurt them the most. — James Cook

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them. — Mother Teresa

We urgently need a debate about the best ways of supporting families in modern America, without blinders that prevent us from seeing the full extent of dependence and interdependence in American life. As long as we pretend that only poor or abnormal families need outside assistance, we will shortchange poor families, overcompensate rich ones, and fail to come up with effective policies for helping families in the middle. — Stephanie Coontz

Once again, the Republicans in the Senate have rejected an increase in the minimum wage. They support tax breaks for multi-millionaires, but they oppose helping the working poor to earn a decent income. — Mark Dayton

Christians and Muslims can still get along. On issues such as global warming and helping the poor. — Bob Abernethy

Lets toil under the sun to build poles of love. And let our roots be planted like strong trees that strong winds can't move. — Auliq Ice

In the poor and outcast we see Christ's face; by loving and helping the poor, we love and serve Christ. — Pope Francis

Poor Metias. He's not supposed to be a father. He's supposed to be out on his own, independent and free to concentrate on his job as a young captain. But somebody has to take care of me, and I make his life so much harder than it needs to be. I wonder what things must have been like for him back when our parents were still alive, when I was a toddler and Metias was a teenager and he could focus on growing up instead of helping someone else grow up. Still, Metias hasn't complained once. Not a single time. And even though I wish our parents were here, sometimes I'm really happy that this is our little family unit, just me and my brother, each watching out for no one but the other. We do the best we can. — Marie Lu

Jesus discouraged the accumulation of wealth, worried about its effects on those who had it, and took special pleasure in helping the poor, dedicating his efforts to them. He must have shaken his head at the large gaps between rich and poor throughout ancient Palestine in the first century. — Jay Parini

By helping the poor, we must be able to remove their poverty. But extending help to one here and one there in the form of providing food will not remove poverty. — Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

I know I could never forgive myself if I elected to live without humane purpose, without trying to help the poor and unfortunate, without recognizing that perhaps the purest joy in life comes with trying to help others. — Arthur Ashe

Tonglen dissolves your solid sense of "I'm the wise person, I'm going to help this poor, unfortunate loser." — Pema Chodron

There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it. — Will Rogers

One person devotes his life to helping the poor. Another one lies and steals. Still another person tries to create better products and services for which he hopes to be paid handsomely. One woman devotes herself to her husband and children. Another seeks a career as a singer. In every case, the basic motivation has been the same. Each person is doing what he believes will bring him happiness. What varies between them is the means each has chosen to gain his happiness. — Harry Browne

Every Christian in America has some minimal responsibility to get involved in helping the poor brethren in the church in other countries. — K.P. Yohannan

You can't help the poor by being one of them. — Abraham Lincoln

Christians should be well versed in what the Bible has to say about human sexuality and economic issues as well as effective methods of compassion for helping the poor and most vulnerable if we hope to gain a hearing with those living in our urban areas. — Christopher W. Brooks

The tax code is not the only area where the administration is helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It has spent $155 billion for an unnecessary war driven by fear. — Dennis Kucinich

The world, Mma Ramotswe believed, was composed of big things and small things. The big things were written large, and one could not but be aware of them
wars, oppression, the familiar theft by the rich and the strong of those simple things that the poor needed, those scraps which would make their life more bearable; this happened, and could make even the reading of a newspaper an exercise in sorrow. There were all those unkindnesses, palpable, daily, so easily avoidable; but one could not think just of those, thought Mma Ramotswe, or one would spend one's time in tears
and the unkindnesses would continue. So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. — Alexander McCall Smith

It is proper that the duty of helping the poor and unfortunate should especially stir Catholics, since they are members of the Mystical Body of Christ. In this we have come to know the love of God, said John the Apostle, that He laid down His life for us, and we likewise ought to lay down our life for the brethren. He who has the goods of this world and sees his brother in need and closes his heart to him, how does the love of God abide in him? (1Jn 3:16 17) — Pope John XXII

If I came to your town and asked any person on the street, "Which church should I go to if I want to get involved in helping the poor or homeless in this community?" would your church be the first one mentioned? Make this identity your goal. — Dillon Burroughs

Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters. — Criss Jami

Lee saw the fireball and head through the roar in his ears Hester saying, "That's the last of 'em Lee."
He said, or thought, "Those poor men didn't have to come to this, nor did we."
She said, "We held 'em off. We held out. We're a-helping Lyra."
Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died. — Philip Pullman

Another argument: The rich are job creators. They are helping the poor. If their taxes are cut, they can create more jobs. Ah, facts again. The rich actually tend to keep their money by buying prime real estate, yachts, art, and the like - things that will appreciate in value without giving back much to the economy as a whole. Moreover, the rich don't just give jobs out of the goodness of their hearts. Look at economics from the perspective of work: Working people are profit-creators. The rich only create jobs when they can get employees who can create profit for them. The poor create profit for the rich. Conservatives — George Lakoff

Progressivism is a spectrum; it's not an ideology following one leader saying one thing. It's many people who have very wildly diverging opinions about many things. But, as progressives, if we could commit to a general frame of reference that we are about improving the quality of life for a lot more people, we're about helping working and middle-class people, and we're about taking care of poor people, we could really make some inroads in political power in this country. But, if we choose to be purists, if we choose to be arguing for a consensus we will never reach, for agreement on every point, it's never going to happen. — Urvashi Vaid

But more than anything else, we have learned that legal assistance for the poor, when properly provided, is one of the most constructive ways to help them help themselves. — Richard M. Nixon

The government is committed towards helping the poor and neo- middle class with the success mantra of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas. It is in line with government's vision to create a skilled and digital India. — Narendra Modi

Jesus preached more and taught more about helping the poor and the sick and the hungry than he did about heaven and hell. Shouldn't that tell us something? — John Grisham

I have committed my life to helping the poor, and I believe that if more companies followed Wal-Mart's lead in providing opportunity and savings to those who need it most, more Americans battling poverty would realize the American dream. — Andrew Young

As an economist specializing in the global economy, international trade and debt, I have spent most of my career helping others make big decisions - prime ministers, presidents and chief executives - and so I'm all too aware of the risks and dangers of poor choices in the public as well as the private sphere. — Noreena Hertz

Anybody who runs for president in this country and comes out as strong as the Democrats were about helping the poor folks and black folks is not going to win. — Charles Evers

It's not a bad thing fighting for equality and helping the poor. It's not a bad thing to have on your professional tombstone: 'He believed in equality and he helped the poor.' — Joe Jamail

One study on the treatment of asthma patients conducted by researchers John Goyeche, Dr. Ago, and Dr. Ikemi, suggests that any effective treatment should address suppressed emotions-such as anxiety and self-image-as well as the physical dimension. To achieve this, they encourage correction of poor posture, and helping the person relax the irrelevant respiratory muscles while restoring full diaphragmatic breathing. They also recommended finding ways for getting rid of excess mucus. The good news is that a well rounded breath practice will do all these things. — Donna Farhi

Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you're not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You're basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich. — Robert Reich