Poor People Quotes & Sayings

How impossible it is for us to imagine ourselves victims of disaster. We suffer for the poor people who were thrown into the sea from their cruise ship off the coast of Tuscany, some losing their lives. Imagine a world of accelerating natural disasters, one after the other so that nobody can help anyone else. — Vivienne Westwood

The word was born in the blood, grew in the dark body, beating, and took flight through the lips and the mouth. Farther away and nearer still, still it came from dead fathers and from wondering races, from lands which had turned to stone, lands weary of their poor tribes, for when grief took to the roads the people set out and arrived and married new land and water to grow their words again. And so this is the inheritance; this is the wavelength which connects us with dead men and the dawning of new beings not yet come to light. — Pablo Neruda

From the fact of general well-being came the new position of the poor. They were now in most communities a minority. The voice of the people was now the voice of relative affluence. Politicians in pursuit of votes could be expected to have a diminishing concern for the very poor. Compassion would have to serve instead - an uncertain substitute. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn't know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands. — Will Rogers

Whether rich or poor, following the Should Life will lead to heartache and struggle. Leading your life will lead to places you never thought you'd be, people you never thought you'd meet, knowledge you never thought you'd gain, and a life of adventure and growth. Lead your life; not the Should Life. — Tirumalai S. Srivatsan

Some people are so poor, all they have is their money. — Blake Griffin

thought about it and concluded that I would go ahead with the venture since Shapoorji was confident about the movie's success. The more I worked on the basic conflict in the script between the brother who has to uphold the law of the country and the brother who flees from the law, which favours the rich and the powerful and unjustly incriminates the poor and the defenceless, the more I felt it was time for me to make a picture that raised some critical issues about the people of rural India who had gained little from the country's independence from foreign rule. The oppressed farmers and tillers — Dilip Kumar

Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples. — P. J. O'Rourke

People from the world's richest countries should be prepared to accept the burden of debt reduction for heavily indebted poor countries, and should urge their leaders to fulfill the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by the year 2015. — Pope Benedict XVI

A thought crossed his mind: How do you make poor people feel wealthy when wages are stagnant? You give them cheap loans. — Michael Lewis

We need leadership in this country, which will improve the lives of working families, the children, the elderly, the sick and the poor. We need leadership which brings our people together and makes us stronger. — Bernie Sanders

I was reading Emily Dickinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson, but these weren't the poets that influenced me. I think Gwendolyn Brooks influenced me because she wrote about Chicago, and she wrote about poor people. And she influenced me in my life by giving me a blurb. I would see her in action, and she listened to every single person. She didn't say, "Oh, I'm tired. I gotta go." She was there, and present, with every single person. She's one of the great teachers. — Sandra Cisneros

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

Why me?" I hear his answer in my head before he says it.
"Don't know, honey. But there's a reason for everything." Dad pats my hand. "We'll just have to wait patiently to see what it is."
As i do every time he says that or something like this, I bite back what I'd say if I could reply honestly. I don't believe there's a reason for everything, and having faith doesn't mean I'm blind. I believe people make poor choices. I believed bad things happen to good people. I believe there's evil in the world that I will never understand, but will never stop fighting. If I believe for two seconds that there was a reason behind some of the awful things that occur in this life, I wouldn't be able to stand it. — Tammara Webber

We also know that the various faith-based institutions provide about 50 per cent of the health and education services in the poor communities; we also know that they have a large constituency including women and youth; they have outreach and networks and they are credible to their people. If we want to achieve the Millennium Development Foals by scaling up the responses of all the communities, do we ignore this large investment in people? Or do we engage in dialogue and in action? — Thoraya Obaid

The most important assets we have are our bodies and our energy which can be put to good use as resources in political activism for poor and working people. — Cornel West

You can go back 150 years and literally find the same people saying the same thing in the same way. "If we have to pay you more, it will be bad for you." And that's because saying that is a much more polite way of saying, "I'm rich, you're poor, and I would prefer to keep it what way." — Nick Hanauer

If life really begins at forty, then all poor people die in their teens. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don't recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp. — Robert Baden-Powell

For Jefferson, there was one step crucial to creating a genuine natural aristocracy. The poor and rich had to have equal access to a good education. That's why, despite being soemthing of a liberatarian, he repeatedly proposed that the state pay for universal primary education as well as fund education at later stages. He was met with opposition from many quarters, mostly those wary of big government or highter taxes. Yet interestingly, one of this most ardent supporters was an old friend and political opponent, the conservative John Adams. "The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people, and must be willing to bear the expenses of it," Adams wrote. "There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people. — Fareed Zakaria

He's weeping, his face dissolving in his hands. It's exhausting. People hiding behind the asteroid, like it's an excuse for poor conduct, for miserable and desperate and selfish behavior, everybody ducking in its comet-tail like children in mommy's skirts. — Ben H. Winters

When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don't need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest. If our own life is luxurious and wasteful, we can't approach poor people. If we love people, we want to identify with them and share with them. — Jean Vanier

The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything. — Thomas Merton

My dear brothers and sisters,* how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? 2 For example, suppose someone comes into your meeting* dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes. 3 If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, "You can stand over there, or else sit on the floor" - well, 4 doesn't this discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives? — Anonymous

In the same way, people who sleep when they should be working are testing God. Because God promised to take care of them, they assume that God will find a way. But in Proverbs, God told them to work: "Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth" (Proverbs 10:4). — Martin Luther

Ron Paul is crazy, the guardians of respectable opinion assured us. What they really meant was that Ron Paul defied traditional political categories and advanced positions outside the Clinton-to-Romney continuum. People whose minds have been formed in ideological prison camps for 12 years have learned to confine themselves within an approved range of possibilities. Tax me 35 percent or tax me 40 percent, but don't raise the possibility that taxation itself may be a moral issue rather than just a matter of numbers. Either bomb or starve that poor country, but don't tell me there might be a third option. The Fed should loosen or the Fed should tighten, but don't tell me our money supply doesn't need to be supervised by a central planner. As always, confine yourself to the three square inches of intellectual terrain the New York Times has graciously allotted to you. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

No matter where you go, poor people have the capacity to endure. Some people even compliment us on it, as if endurance is all we can achieve. — Victor LaValle

When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. — Sarah Kendzior

The goal to strive for is a poor government but a rich people. — Andrew Johnson

[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all. — Michael Palin

Despite what I said before, it had not been a fear of infecting other people or poor health that had stopped me from going, but vanity.
It was a good lesson. — Gabrielle Zevin

My mother - she's a good old classic Northern European socialist - she's totally wonderful, but she raised me up believing that rich people have stolen their money from poor people. — Tobias Lindholm

Men whose only concern is other people's opinion of them are like actors who put on a poor performance to win the applause of people of poor taste; some of them would be capable of good acting in front of a good audience. A decent man plays his part to the best of his ability, regardless of the taste of the gallery. — Nicolas Chamfort

You can spend the money on new housing for poor people and the homeless, or you can spend it on a football stadium or a golf course. — Jello Biafra

All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their monopolies and deceit. They have brought many unfortunate people into a state of poverty, especially the farmers, working class people and the very poor. Then as now Jews have to be reminded intermittently anew that they were enjoying rights in any country since they left Palestine and the Arabian desert, and subsequently their ethical and moral doctrines as well as their deeds rightly deserve to be exposed to criticism in whatever country they happen to live. — Pope Clement VIII

Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we're marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah." You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it's because it's not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it's speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me. — David Foster Wallace

Current public diplomacy and foreign policy making reduces the role of American citizens to mere spectators. The USIA's model of democracy and the free market is promoted as the superpower version of economic globalization, packaged and ready for shipping to clients throughout the world. In this version, foreign capital flows freely while the movement of people, particularly the world's poor, is strictly controlled. Such a commercial package speaks first and foremost for government 'partners,' the Fortune 500 corporations, which are the primary beneficiaries as well as the bankrollers of the American political process. This is a packaged story of America that is incomplete and undemocratic. Where do workers and communities fit into the story? How do private citizens play a part in building dialogue across cultures? — Nancy Snow

The people who believe themselves superior to you will reveal themselves in how they respond to criticism from you. An opinion of anyone carries as much weight as whatever value that person's social currency has. A poor man spouting words more thought provoking than plato would not be credit for his prudence for his social currency and not his wisdom decides the value of his life. — Crystal Evans

Until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do more harm than good. I sometimes unintentionally reduce poor people to objects that I use to fulfill my own need to accomplish something. I am not okay, and you are not okay. But Jesus can fix us both. — Steve Corbett

Live Below the Line raises real money to help the world's poorest people, but it is also a symbolic demonstration aimed at highlighting - not replicating - the plight of the world's poor. — Hugh Evans

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this. — Michael Eric Dyson

To many an upright poor person, it seems needless to invent a god who will wash the feet of beggars and exalt those who do not care to labor. What is this but a denial of thrift and a sickly obsession with the victim? The so-called common people are quite able to penetrate this ruse ("The good lord must indeed love the poor, since he made so many of them"). Many decent people are made uneasy by the constant injunction to give alms and to dwell among those who have lost their self-respect. They can also see the hook sticking out of the bait: abandon this useless life, leave your family, and follow the prophet who says that the world is soon to pass away. Such an injunction coupled with an implicit or explicit "or else" is repulsive to many conservatives who believe in self-reliance and personal integrity, and who distrust "charity," just as it was repulsive to the early socialists who did not think that poverty was an ideal or romantic or ennobled state. — Christopher Hitchens

Things I learned from a man called "The Nazarene"
1- Being poor does not equal being miserable.
2- People will judge you, but their judgment should not define who you are.
3- Going against what others hold as true is not necessarily a bad thing.
4- Everyone is sacred.
5- Life is sometimes a lonely and dry place, like desert, but those times are there to help us meditate on what is truly important in our lives.
6- Complaining or getting angry because there is a storm in our lives solves nothing; embrace the storm and keep calm.
7- Treasure and protect the children of the world, they hold the key of what is pure and innocent; they are the way to freedom.
8- We are free to be who we want to be, it is our choice to be slaves or kings.
9- Fear nothing.
10- The person you don't like is also your neighbor.
11- The words following "I AM" define who we are, we must choose wisely. — Martin Suarez

If we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous, we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

I believe Aids is the most important issue we face, because how we treat the poor is a reflection of who we are as a people. — Alicia Keys

They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was not because there was anything virtuous about poor people, it was simply because poor people had no money. — Terry Pratchett

We don't want sympathetic liberals, we want gays to represent gays ... I represent the gay street people-the 14-year-old runaway from San Antonio. We have to make up for hundreds of years of persecution. We have to give hope to that poor runaway kid from San Antonio. They go to the bars because churches are hostile. They need hope! They need a piece of the pie! — Harvey Milk

She is often the broken-winged one, who does everything all wrong until people realize she's been doing it ... pretty right all along. She's the poor girl who never dressed right, who had torn hose, and they were all baggy around her ankles. She's the Raggedy Ann of the sophisticated world, who pulls it out at the last minute, flies by the seat of her pants, cackling all the way home. She is the late bloomer, the late start, the autumn bush, the winter holly. She is Baubo, all the classical Greek goddesses. She is the old girl who still blushes, and laughs, and dances. She's the truth teller, maybe that people hate to hear, but they learn to listen to. She is not dumb and in some ways is not shrewd. She works on passion, and the doll in her pocket, and the intuition that leads her into and through all the world. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community. — Jean Vanier

The power of the word in Morocco belonged to men and to the authorities. No one asked the point of view of poor people or women. — Tahar Ben Jelloun

Two years ago, George Bush felt prompted to address this issue. More spending on public education, said the president, isn't "the best answer." Mr. Bush went on to caution parents of poor children who see money "as a cure" for education problems. "A society that worships money ... ," said the president, "is a society in peril." The president himself attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts - a school that spends $11,000 yearly on each pupil, not including costs of room and board. If money is a wise investment for the education of a future president at Andover, it is no less so for the child of poor people in Detroit. But the climate of the times does not encourage this belief, and the president's words will surely reinforce that climate. — Jonathan Kozol

I had a very good time when I did The Gleaners - even though the people are poor, and I was suffering to see the conditions, and plus they are not such lovely hearts. They are tough to each other, they beat each other, they are rude and they are violent and they drink. They're not sweethearts, you know, but some were so interesting. — Agnes Varda

When I stepped into this world, I saw that we were all burdened by a certain kind of indifference to the plight of poor people. We were burdened by an insensitivity to a legacy of racial bias. We were tolerating unfairness and unreliability in a way that burdened me and provoked me. — Bryan Stevenson

Every word he wrote would be strong with that sweet purity and simplicity that was his gift alone, placing him higher than any living poet, secure on his pedestal apart from the world, like a great silent god above the little dwarfs of men tossed hither and thither in the stream of life. From the crystal clearness of his brain the images became words, and the words became magic, and the whole was transcendent of beauty, one thread touching another, alike in their perfection and their certitude of immortality. Thus it seemed to me he was not a living figure of flesh and blood, but a monument to the national pride of his country, his England, and now and then he would bow gravely from his pedestal and scatter to the people a small quantity of his thought, which they would grub for on their poor rough ground, then clasp to their hungry hearts as treasure. — Daphne Du Maurier

Do you know what keeps poor people down, Mr. Parrish? It's not a lack of income. It's a poverty of imagination. The trailer park dreams of the suburbs, and the suburbs dreams of the city, the city dreams of the stars, so on and so forth. The poor can imagine the throne, but not being kingly. Poverty of imagination. — Maggie Stiefvater

Most poor people in America were like Arleen: they did not live in public housing or apartments subsidized by vouchers. Three in four families who qualified for assistance received nothing. — Matthew Desmond

It is not true that there is dignity in all work. Some jobs are definitely better than others ... People who have good jobs are happy, rich, and well dressed. People who have bad jobs are unhappy, poor and use meat extenders. Those who seek dignity in the type of work that compels them to help hamburgers are certain to be disappointed. — Fran Lebowitz

I decided that mankind could live better without gods. If I disposed of them all, people could start having can openers and cans to open again, and things like that, without fearing the wrath of Heaven. We've stepped on these poor fools enough. I wanted to give them a chance to be free, to build what they wanted. — Roger Zelazny

Even though we are supposed to be low caste and poor our vote also has the same value and validity as that of great people. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

The symptoms of executive skills problems are generic enough that it is sometimes hard for people to see them as other than just bad behavior or signs of poor parenting. — Joyce Cooper-Kahn

My vagina's angry. It is. It's pissed off. My vagina's furious and it needs to talk. It needs to talk about all
this shit. It needs to talk to you. I mean what's the deal - an army of people out there thinking up ways to
torture my poor-ass, gentle, loving vagina. Spending their days constructing psycho products, and nasty
ideas to undermine my pussy. Vagina Motherfuckers.
All this shit they're constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up - stuff us up, make it go away. Well, my
vagina's not going away. It's pissed off and it's staying right here. Like tampons - what the hell is that? — Eve Ensler

I had no respect whatsoever for the creative works of either the painter or the novelist. I thought Karabekian with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid. I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end. — Kurt Vonnegut

Wicked ecclesiastics who show the worst example to the people," and, above all, nobles who empty the purses of the poor by their extravagance, and disdain them for "lowness of blod or foulenesse of body," for deformed shape of body or limb, for dullness of wit and uncunning of craft, and deign not to speak to them, and who are themselves stuffed with pride - of ancestry, fortune, gentility, possessions, power, comeliness, strength, children, treasure - "prowde in lokynge, prowde in spekyng, ... prowde in goinge, standynge and sytting." All would be drawn by fiends to Hell on the Day of Judgment. — Barbara W. Tuchman

I can say it, but it doesn't seem convincing to most people. I can call it an 'injustice,' but that doesn't always sink in either. You have to understand the nature of the culture in New York. Words that are equal to the pain of the poor are pretty easily discredited. A quarter of the truth, stated with lots of indirection, is regarded as more seemly.

Even when people do accept the idea of 'injustice,' there are ways to live with it without it causing you to change a great deal in your life. A mildly embarrassed toleration of injustice is an elemental part of cultural sophistication here. the stile is, 'Oh yes. We know all that. So tell us something new.' There's a kind of cultivated weariness in this. Talking about injustice, I am told, is 'tiresome' unless you do it in a way that sounds amusing. — Jonathan Kozol

I began my career as an economics professor but became frustrated because the economic theories I taught in the classroom didn't have any meaning in the lives of poor people I saw all around me. I decided to turn away from the textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence. — Muhammad Yunus

The music industry is in such poor shape; it's in a really bad way, and a lot of people in the industry are very depressed. — Kate Bush

I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misundertood.
Or victims of that manipulative force: Love.
Love causes war and causes death, breaks souls and breaks lives. It runs people into the ground, makes them behave like moronic, immoral beasts, before it dances off, leaving only destruction in its wake - hearts blown wide open for the whole world to see.
Love puts the blame on the poor souls who succumb to it.
Love, that ultimate villainess. She makes examples of us all.
And yet we still come back for more.
We keep playing the role she gives us.
For one more chance to feel alive. — Karina Halle

Likewise, in any social hierarchy, people unsure of their own position will try to emphasize it by maltreating those they think rank below. I've read that this is why poor whites in the United States are the group most hostile to blacks. — Paul Graham

The only power poor people have is their hunger. — Ben Okri

People are not poor because they do not have money; they are poor because they do not have knowledge. — Bidemi Mark-Mordi

The Christian community, therefore, is that community that freely becomes oppressed, because they know that Jesus himself has defined humanity's liberation in the context of what happens to the little ones. Christians join the cause of the oppressed in the fight for justice not because of some philosophical principle of "the Good" or because of a religious feeling of sympathy for people in prison. Sympathy does not change the structures of injustice. The authentic identity of Christians with the poor is found in the claim which the Jesus-encounter lays upon their own life-style, a claim that connects the word "Christian" with the liberation of the poor. Christians fight not for humanity in general but for themselves and out of their love for concrete human beings. — James H. Cone

Our governor in Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, once told a story about his grandma. She said, "Don't call people 'the poor.' Call people broke. Broke is temporary." I try not to say "the poor" because it sounds like a sentence, like I'm putting people in a box, far away from those of us who can make ends meet. But someone who is broke, on the other hand, is a peer. — Molly Phinney Baskette

Change comes, when every person is adequately benefited.
We keep hearing about "change." Change will never come to all of society. Change can only come when the market system adequately provide all of the needs for all people. Millions are living in poverty in the United States and throughout the world, due to "change" passed them by, are struggling: Among them are high unemployment, the mentally challenged, poor education, many of them are homeless and hungry, sick and tired; such individuals, look for ways to move beyond their prison walls that hold them back from moving forward: Through the corridors of their prison, they observe the wealthy getting wealthier. They see the market system passing them at a fast rate of speed. Hope has long left the majority of them. There is a price that must be paid for the sins of those who have built these prisons. — Ellen J. Barrier

While we were being bombed in Dresden sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it. — Kurt Vonnegut

My johns adored and worshipped me, therefore they empowered me. When I was 18, 19, and 20, I had a poor self-image and needed attention. It's hard for people who haven't been prostitutes to imagine, but I think it's often true. There can be a very symbiotic relationship happening. — Annie Sprinkle

Very commonly substances are criminalized because they're associated with what's called the dangerous classes, you know, poor people, or working people ... Actually, the peak of marijuana use was as I said, in the seventies, but that was rich kids, so you don't throw them in jail. And then it got seriously criminalized, you know, you really throw people in jail for it, when it was poor people. — Noam Chomsky

You will never be able to live with two kinds of people; greedy rich and arrogant poor. — M.F. Moonzajer

It's not just a matter of poor willpower on the part of the consumer and a give-the-people-what-they-want attitude on the part of the food manufacturers. What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort ... to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive. — Michael Moss

when only poor people use something, no one takes care of it. Roads, schools, neighborhoods. Subways too. — Adam Sternbergh

I hate my country. There are so many rich people who don't share their shit. They're like spoiled little ten-year-old bullies on the playground. They hog the monkey bars and the slide and the seesaw. And if you complain even a little bit, if you try to get just one spin on the merry-go-round, the bullies beat the shit out of you. — Sherman Alexie

I make shoes for white suburban kids, not the poor black kids. That would be like opening a restaurant for people without stomachs. — Michael Jordan

Social media has changed the world forever. We're not going to go backwards. People are not going to accept being poor, accept being excluded anymore. — Jim Yong Kim

We're the only nation in the world where most of our poor people are fat. — Phil Gramm

You can't do much for the poor, as they are not in with the right people. — Will Cuppy

Liverpool was an industrial town, a poor town. The people fought hard for what they wanted to achieve and there was a hunger there, and that hunger has remained with the musicians. — Pete Best

Suppose you were a real estate investor with a 1/3 interest in the best apartment complex in town, the best mall, and the best office building. Would you feel like a poor, undiversified investor? No! But as soon as you get into stocks, people feel this way. Partly, people need to justify their fees. — Charlie Munger

We need a better strategy for poor people ... because what we're doing isn't working. — Mick Cornett

Battles against Rome have been lost and won before, but hope was never abandoned, since we were always here in reserve. We, the choicest flower of Britain's manhood, were hidden away in her most secret places. Out of sight of subject shores, we kept even our eyes free from the defilement of tyranny. We, the most distant dwellers upon earth, the last of the free, have been shielded till today by our very remoteness and by the obscurity in which it has shrouded our name. Now, the farthest bounds of Britain lie open to our enemies; and what men know nothing about they always assume to be a valuable prize ...
A rich enemy excites their cupidity; a poor one, their lust for power. East and West alike have failed to satisfy them. They are the only people on earth to whose covetousness both riches and poverty are equally tempting. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name of 'government'; they create a desolation and call it peace ... — Tacitus

His sisters
my aunts
did not go to school at all, just like millions of girls in my country. Education had been a great gift for him. He believed that lack of education was the root of all of Pakistan's problems. Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected. He believed schooling should be available for all, rich and poor, boys and girls. The school that my father dreamed of would have desks and a library, computers, bright posters on the walls and, most important, washrooms. — Malala Yousafzai

We vote every day for companies, for people, and we put money toward 'campaigns.' We need to think of the faces behind the scenes. Who are the masters and Caesars that we pledge allegiance to by the way we live and through the things we put our trust in? We vote every day with our feet, our hands, our lips, and our wallets. We are the vote for the poor. We are to vote for the peacemakers. We are to vote for the marginalized, the oppressed, the most vulnerable of our society. These are the ones Jesus voted for, those whom every empire had left behind, those whom no millionaire politician will represent. — Shane Claiborne

This time of year," she said, "people's consciences gnaw at them. They give away truckloads of canned goods and quote Dickens and wring their hands over the 'less fortunate.'" We boarded the Metro and took seats perpendicular to each other. "But God forbid anyone should address why they're poor in the first place, or try to change the structures that keep them poor. Then the 'less fortunate' turn into 'welfare queens' and 'derelicts.' But if I were a lobbyist whoring on behalf of some transnational corporation, I'd never hear the word 'derelict.'"

"So when it comes to taking care of poor people," I said, "if Mother Teresa is the Hallmark card, then you're the electric bill. — Jeri Smith-Ready

Often we suffer because we don't realize what's essential.
We may want to be rich, but the rich are lonely.
We see all those people on TV that have won the lottery and want to be at their place, but studies show that they are even more miserable after having won the big check. They don't really know what to do with all that money, take poor decisions on how to spend them, change themselves and their friends don't see them in the same way. — Lidiya K.

Wealthy people are often criticized for being obsessed with money, but the truth is, it's the poor, working, and middle class that spend the most time thinking about it. — Steve Siebold

We grew up as poor people but we never knew poverty. I still love and miss the Somalia I grew up in. Things changed, when my father became a diplomat later on. — Iman Abdulmajid

My dad left when I was a little boy and I grew up with my mother's family. There were foundations in the U.S. where Jewish people got together and sent money to Cuba, so we got some of that. We were a poor family, but I was always a happy kid. — William Levy

People always assume that bachelors are single by choice and spinsters because nobody asked them. It never enters their heads that poor bachelors might have worn the knees of their trousers out proposing to girls who rejected them or that a girl might deliberately stay unmarried ... — Jilly Cooper

What you are witnessing is the face of war a great ruler seldom sees, my lady," Master Lo Feng said to her. Her veiled face turned his way, listening. "No matter how righteous the cause, no matter who wins, the commonfolk suffer. Without plenty, the wealthy lack compassion for the poor, hoarding without sharing. Without law, the strong bully the weak, stealing by force. People will go hungry. Some will starve. Men and women will be forced to choose between feeding their parents and their children. — Jacqueline Carey

The impact of all these restrictions is on poor women, because women who have means, if their state doesn't provide access, another state does ... It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Finally, I've come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned. We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. — Bryan Stevenson

Poor people have more fun than rich people, they say; and I notice it's the rich people who keep saying it. — Jack Paar