Poor Folks Quotes & Sayings

Oh England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high,
But England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I — Charles Kingsley

If people continue to feel like Democrats are looking after poor folks and Republicans are looking after rich folks and nobody is looking after me, then we don't get a lot of stuff done. And the trend lines evidence the fact that folks have gotten squeezed. And obviously, 2007, 2008 really ripped open for people how vulnerable they were. — Barack Obama

Mama says no matter how poor folks are, whether you're a have, a have-not, or break your mama's back on the cracks in between, the world gives away the best stuff on the cheap — Emily Murdoch

Wrinkled women lifting their faces, chasing their youth.
Fat men sucking in bellies.
Poor folks putting on airs.
Sinners acting like saints.
All of us keeping pace with our companions, stepping lively in this dance of deceit. — Philip Gulley

You know they used to use nails," he says. "In the old days. Poor folks still do. Not the best idea, a nail in a coffin." Bowman says nothing, but in his mind, he asks, Coffin? The man nods, smiling. He picks up something now, and shows it to Bowman, for inspection. It is a long brass screw. "That's better," he says. "Better than a nail. Notice anything about it?" Bowman shakes his head. "The screw runs widdershins. Back to front. 'Gainst the clock. All the other screws in the world turn the other way to this one. But coffin screws are different. " Bowman forms a word in his mind. Why? The coffin maker smiles. "To stop them from coming back, of course. — Marcus Sedgwick

Look. Folks. It's simple. If you have poor taste in decorating, don't go nuts in the entryway. Wait until your guests are inside before you spring something unusual on them. — James Lileks

Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am tonight, and preached of flames and vengeance,' cried the girl. 'Oh, dear lady, why ar'n't those who claim to be God's own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler? — Charles Dickens

O drink is mighty! secrets it unlocks, Turns hope to fact, sets cowards on to box, Takes burdens from the careworn, finds out parts In stupid folks, and teaches unknown arts. What tongue hangs fire when quickened by the bowl? What wretch so poor but wine expands his soul? — Horace

There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.
And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.
So you watch yourself about complaining.
What you're supposed to do
when you don't like a thing is change it.
If you can't change it,
change the way you think about it. — Maya Angelou

And twelve more white men had stopped whatever they were doing to listen and pass on what happened between Janie and Tea Cake Woods, and as to whether things were done right or not. That was funny too. Twelve strange men who didn't know a thing about people like Tea Cake and her were going to sit on the thing. Eight or ten white women had come to look at her too. They wore good clothes and had the pinky color that comes of good food. They were nobody's poor white folks. What need had they to leave their richness to come look on Janie in her overalls? — Zora Neale Hurston

America is concerned more with the possibility of moon folks than the reality of hungry poor folks. — Dick Gregory

Ay! idleness! the rich folks never fail
To find some reason why the poor deserve
Their miseries. — Robert Southey

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

We used to trust in God. I think it was in 1863 that some genius suggested that it be put upon the gold and silver coins which circulated among the rich. They didn't put it on the nickels and coppers because they didn't think the poor folks had any trust in God. — Mark Twain

for God raised Jesus from the dead for the sake of shepherds and children and poor folks and all of us who worry a lot about security but can never finally make ourselves safe. — James C. Howell

Let us people who are so uncommonly clever and learned have a great tenderness and pity for the poor folks who are not endowed with the prodigious talents which we have. — William Makepeace Thackeray

They talk o' rich folks bein' stuck up and genteel, but for iron-clad pride o' respectability there's nowt like poor chapel folk. Why, 'tis as cold as the wind on Greenhow Hill
aye, and colder, too, for 'twill never change. — Rudyard Kipling

Lobbyists in Washington are making six figure salaries selling our government out to the corporate interests and we just sit and smile as if nothing is happening while the poor folks are getting poorer and their pharmaceutical bills rise. — Hal Holbrook

Even though I'm almost seventy years old, I got a lot to learn, too. I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn't ever gon' have no kind a' future. But I found out everybody's different
the same kind of different as me. We're all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us.
The truth about it is, whether we rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain't no final restin place. So in a way, we is all homeless
just workin our way toward home. — Ron Hall

says. 'Heaven was made for the likes of us,' he says; 'just for poor working folks like us, that have been sober and godly and kept our Communions regular.' That's the best way, ain't it, Miss Dorothy - poor in this life and rich in the next? Not like some of them rich folks as all their motor-cars and their beautiful houses won't save from the worm that dieth not and the fire that's not quenched. Such a beautiful text, that is. Do you think you could say a little prayer with me, Miss Dorothy? I been looking forward all the morning to a little prayer." Mrs. — George Orwell

Did you ever feel happy in church?" "Naw. I didn't want to. Nobody but poor folks get happy in church." "But you are poor, Bigger."
Again Bigger's eyes lit with a bitter and feverish pride. "I ain't that poor. — Richard Wright

The poor folk gladly came to me, for I did them no unkindness, but helped them as much as I could. — Joan Of Arc

On May 19, Malcolm X's birthday, two police had been machine-gunned on Riverside Drive. I felt sorry for their families, sorry for their children, but i was relieved to see that somebody else besides Black folks and Puerto Ricans and Chicanos was being shot at. I was sick and tired of us being the only victims, and i didn't care who knew it. As far as i was concerned, the police in the Black communities were nothing but a foreign, occupying army, beating, torturing, and murdering people at whim and without restraint. I despise violence, but i despise it even more when it's one-sided and used to oppress and repress poor people. — Assata Shakur

Folks like poor Misty Marie, they're limited, borderline dummies, but nothing enough to get a handicapped parking space. Or get any kind of Special Olympic Games. They just pay the bulk of taxes but get no special menu at the steak house. No oversized bathroom stall. No special seat at the front of the bus. No political lobby. — Chuck Palahniuk

My folks were English. They were too poor to be British. I still have a bit of British in me. In fact, my blood type is solid marmalade. — Bob Hope

Housing projects are a great metaphor for the government's relationship to poor folks: these huge islands built mostly in the middle of nowhere, designed to warehouse lives. People are still people, though, so we turned the projects into real communities, poor or not. We played in fire hydrants and had cookouts and partied, music bouncing off concrete walls. But even when we could shake off the full weight of those imposing buildings and try to just live, the truth of our lives and struggle was still invisible to the larger country. The rest of the country was freed of any obligation to claim us. Which was fine, because we weren't really claiming them, either. — Jay-Z

Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argument on their respective sides to make it difficult for them to understand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ills and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and, indeed, if any misfortune happens to him, it is because of some hidden machinations of "white folks." On the other hand, the masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky, dissatisfied, and careless, where their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful. — W.E.B. Du Bois

You know, if you ain't poor, you might think it's the folks in them big ole fine brick churches that's doin all the carin and the prayin. I wish you coulda seen all them little circles a'homeless folks with their heads bowed and their eyes closed, whisperin what was on their hearts. Seemed like they didn't have nothin to give, but they was givin what they had, taken the time to knock on God's front door and ask Him to heal this woman that loved them. — Ron Hall

When you come from desperate poverty, and that's exactly what I come from, you know that nonsenses are not to be tolerated. I'm not sure who gains from chaos, but I know it's not the poor folks in the council flats. The politics of vindictiveness is never, ever anything like a solution. — John Lydon

Mitt Romney has won the 2012 presidential nomination by promising Republicans that he would end a so-called 'culture of dependency' on welfare - welfare defined as 'free stuff' and food stamps for poor folks, not tax breaks for Big Oil or tax shelters for Bain executives. — Christine Pelosi

Some folks may be really bummed to find that "God bless America" does not appear in the Bible. So often we do things that make sense to us and ask God to bless our actions and come alongside our plans, rather than looking at the things God promises to bless and acting alongside of them. For we know that God's blessing will inevitably follow if we are with the poor, the merciful, the hungry, the persecuted, the peacemakers. But sometimes we'd rather have a God who conforms to our logic than conform our logic to the God whose wisdom is a stumbling block to the world of smart bombs and military intelligence. — Shane Claiborne

Often, those with the most to lose as a result of a poor policy move are the most vulnerable and most marginalized. Those folks need a voice, and I will endeavor to be that voice. — Charles M. Blow

I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those core issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society. — Barack Obama

The working-class folks and the poor, and those normal people living their lives out in the world without the glitter and the fanfare. There is a lot to learn from them. — Mark Ruffalo

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

But artists aren't the only marginalized folks controlling real estate. Think about the colonizing role that wealthy white gay men have played in communities of color; they're often the first group to gentrify poor and working-class neighborhoods. Harlem is a good example. Gays have moved in and driven up rents, as have renegade young white students, who want to be cool and hip. This is colonization, post-colonial-style. After all, the people who are "sent back" to recover the territory are always those who don't mind associating with the colored people! And it's a double bind, because some of these people could be allies. Some gay white men are proactive about racism, even while being entrepreneurial. But in the end, they take spaces, redo them, sell them for a certain amount of money, while the people who have been there are displaced. And in some cases, the people of color who are there are perceived as enemies by white newcomers. — Bell Hooks

Consider a white ninth-grade student taking American history in a predominantly middle-class town in Vermont. Her father tapes Sheetrock, earning an income that in slow construction seasons leaves the family quite poor. Her mother helps out by driving a school bus part-time, in addition to taking care of her two younger siblings. The girl lives with her family in a small house, a winterized former summer cabin, while most of her classmates live in large suburban homes. How is this girl to understand her poverty? Since history textbooks present the American past as four hundred years of progress and portray our society as a land of opportunity in which folks get what they deserve and deserve what they get, the failures of working-class Americans to transcend their class origin inevitably get laid at their own doorsteps. — James W. Loewen

I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived. — John Henrik Clarke

My folks were English ... we were too poor to be British. — Bob Hope

The devil wipes his breech with poor folks' pride. — Benjamin Franklin

Maybe it's low-wage work in general that has the effect of making feel like a pariah. When I watch TV over my dinner at night, I see a world in which almost everyone makes $15 an hour or more, and I'm not just thinking of the anchor folks. The sitcoms and dramas are about fashion designers or schoolteachers or lawyers, so it's easy for a fast-food worker or nurse's aide to conclude that she is an anomaly - the only one, or almost the only one, who hasn't been invited to the party. And in a sense she would be right: the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment. Even religion seems to have little to say about the plight of the poor, if that tent revival was a fair sample. The moneylenders have finally gotten Jesus out of the temple. — Barbara Ehrenreich

All backwoods folks were poor by material standards; they knew how to make do. They were not wanting to tame the wildness, in themselves or nature. — Bell Hooks

Those who could - generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected - left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the "truly disadvantaged" - unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support. Wilson's — J.D. Vance

They tell you the story of Job so often to remind you when you lose it all, stay calm. I've always refused it. I hated the story. It made no sense, and then I developed the belief that religion's only purpose is to keep the poor from murdering the rich. And then I found the most dangerous folks are those who have nothing to lose, and I put it all together. — Darnell Lamont Walker

Safety nets for the poor and disadvantaged are a must for any compassionate nation, but encouraging folks to go on the dole when not absolutely necessary is disgraceful. — Bill O'Reilly

Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment are part and parcel of our economic order. Without them, capitalism would cease to function effectively, and in order to continue to function, the system itself must produce poverty and an army of underemployed or unemployed people. — Bob Torres

There, don't you think I'm always a-fault-finding! When I get hold of the real thing in folks, I stick to 'em, - but there's an awful sight of poor material walking about that ain't worth the ground it steps on. — Sarah Orne Jewett

The poor folks hate the rich folks, and the rich folks hate the poor folks. All of my folks hate all of your folks, it's American as apple pie. — Tom Lehrer

Everybody needs history but the people who need it most are poor folks - people without resources or options. — Henry Hampton

If you ask for good schools, you aren't likely to get them. If you ask for jobs or economic investment, you won't get that either. But what we have learned, is that the one thing that poor folks of color can ask for and get are Police & Prisons. — Michelle Alexander

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here. — Ving Rhames

One of my greatest fears, and what might be one of the greatest obstacles to ending or putting a massive dent in extreme poverty alleviation, is this: when everyday, normal people feel as if they can't help. Let me repeat: this is a tragedy.
In fact, I would say it is the ordinary people who will determine how much impact is done in the world. It's the ordinary folks who have a great responsibility. If individuals like you and me decide in our hearts to be deliberate and care for the poor, there is no doubt we can truly see the majority of extreme poverty vanish into thin air. — Chris Marlow