Poorest Quotes & Sayings

Unlocking the treasuries of real home love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy. — Louisa May Alcott

Well, my view before was a Western view, and I certainly understand marriage equality and civil rights, equal rights for all, but having visited developing nations and some of the poorest nations in the world, I realize how deep it goes and how much work really needs to be done to create equality for all. — Jason Mraz

The poorest service is repaid with thanks. — William Shakespeare

I don't really believe in the myth of being poor but happy. At the poorest times in my life, I wasn't happy. I was just hungry. — Ali Liebegott

The best teachers are those that can influence even the poorest of all learners. — Kim Panti

If Africa seeks prosperity, it must provide for the health and nutrition of all - including the poorest. — Bill Gates

And a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire. — Adam Smith

President Obama has said that our aspirations should be realistic. We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to achieve is Afghanistan's capacity to secure and govern itself. — David Petraeus

Today, Wilberforce University welcomes many of America's poorest and most underserved populations and transforms their educational dreams into realities. — Eric Metaxas

As she watched all of this, Liesel was certain that these were the poorest souls alive. That's what she wrote about them ... Some looked appealingly at those who had come to observe their humiliation, this prelude to their deaths. Others pleaded for someone, anyone to step forward and catch them in their arms.
No one did. — Markus Zusak

You may not be the smartest, richest or best looking person but you're probably not the dumbest, ugliest or poorest either. — Rob Liano

We have imagined ourselves a special creation, set apart from other humans. In the last twentieth century, we see that our povertyis as absolute as that of the poorest nations. We have attempted to deny the human condition in our quest for power after power. It would be well for us to rejoin the human race, to accept our essential poverty as a gift, and to share our material wealth with those in need. — Robert Neelly Bellah

The west and southwest of Ireland bore the brunt of the famine. Those areas, including Mayo, Sligo, Roscommon, Galway, Clare, and Cork, were the poorest regions of the island, and the most dependent on subsistence farming. Not coincidentally, these were also the areas that Catholic Irish had been sent to during the Protestant plantation. — Ryan Hackney

In the poorest cottage are Books: is one Book, wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of man has found light, and nourishment, and an interpreting response to whatever is Deepest in him. — Thomas Carlyle

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader. — Washington Irving

At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. — Jeffrey Sachs

My daily affairs are quite ordinary; but I'm in total harmony with them. I don't hold on to anything, don't reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict. Who cares about wealth and honor? Even the poorest thing shines. My miraculous power and spiritual activity: drawing water and carrying wood. — Layman Pang

Many rich and powerful men would pay dearly to see the Lord or His Most Pure Mother, but God does not appear in riches, but in the humble heart ... Every one of the poorest men can be humbles and come to know God. It need neither money nor reputation to come to know God, but only humility. — Silouan The Athonite

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 average American household's income declined for a second year in a row, the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show, down 0.9 percent to $64,432. The wealthiest fifth of Americans were an exception: Their incomes increased by 0.9 percent. Among the poorest fifth, incomes fell 3.5 percent. Taking taxes into account, — Anonymous

The poorest people you meet are the discontent. — Matshona Dhliwayo

From the Sun I learned this: when he goes down, overrich; he pours gold into the sea out of inexhaustible riches, so that even the poorest fisherman still rows with golden oars. For this I once saw and I did not tire of my tears as I watched it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Who constitutes the nation? Only the elite?Or do the hundreds of millions of poor in India also make up the nation? Are their interests never identified with national interest? Or is there more than one nation? That is the question you often run up against in some of India's poorest areas. Areas where extremely poor people go into destitution making way for firing ranges, jet fighter plants, coal mines, power projects, dams, sanctuaries, prawn and shrimp farms, even poultry farms. If the costs they bear are the 'price' of development, then the rest of the 'nation' is having one endless free lunch. — P.Sainath

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, We bargain for the graves we lie in; Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold ... 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 'T is only God may be had for the asking; There is no price set on the lavish summer, And June may be had by the poorest comer. — James Russell Lowell

Kate faced the crowd. They were just eyes and teeth to her, just spit and voices. It was a moment, even, before they became people: a man with one blind eye, another whose neck was thick with lumps and weeping wounds of scrofula. The poorest of the market.
At Kate's feet, Drina. Her scarf and shirt were torn open. — Erin Bow

The first time I received an award, I was very surprised. I did not know whether to accept it or not. But I came to the conclusion that I should accept awards in the name of the poorest poor, as a form of homage to them. I think that basically, when awards are given to me, the existence of the poor in the world is being recognized. — Mother Teresa

The Church is called to draw near to every person, beginning with the poorest and those who suffer. — Pope Francis

His figures should have been through the roof; the economy was still unsteady, the president was hog-tied by his own compromised idealism, and Davis and his kind had succeeded in vilifying unions, immigrants, and welfare cases, making them carry the can for the greed of bankers and Wall Street sharks, thereby somehow convincing sane people that the poorest and weakest in the nation were responsible for most of its ills. What never ceased to amaze Tate was that many of those same individuals (the dirt-poor, the unemployed, the welfare recipients) listened to his show, even as he castigated those (the union organizers, the bleeding-heart liberals) who most wanted to help them. — John Connolly

If you have everything the world has to offer you, but you do not have love, then you are the poorest of the poorest of the poor. — John O'Donohue

This, then, is the global significance of Chungking Mansions. It is a building of the periphery within a city of the core, a city located between the developing world's manufacturing hub and its poorest nether regions. It is a ghetto of middle-class striving within a city of wealthier middle-class striving, viewing its denizens with fear and scorn yet letting business as usual be the law of the day. Chungking — Gordon Mathews

The poorest in America are the sickets. Poor people can't afford preventive care or insurance. The poor don't see doctors. They show up at our doorstep when things are advanced. — Abraham Verghese

Let me put it like this: I am not prepared to officiate over on behalf of the British government what I think is a disastrous strategy which will impact on some of the most vulnerable and poorest people within our society. — Martin McGuinness

The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.3 The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.4 — John Perkins

O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's. — William Shakespeare

The poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say - Mr. Ray, Heaven to Betsy — Maud Hart Lovelace

We, the black people, the most displaced, the poorest, the most maligned and scourged, we had the glorious task of reclaiming the soul and saving the honor of the country. We, the most hated, must take hate into our hands and by the miracle of love, turn loathing into love. We, the most feared and apprehensive must take fear and by love, change it into hope. We, who die daily in large and small ways, must take the demon death and turn it into life.-Martin Luther King Jr. — Maya Angelou

Poor families are living above their means, in apartments they cannot afford. The thing is, those apartments are already at the bottom of the market. 24 Our cities have become unaffordable to our poorest families, and this problem is leaving a deep and jagged scar on the next generation. — Matthew Desmond

These things are happening in large measure because of us. We in this country burn 25 percent of the world's fossil fuel, create 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide. It is us - it is the affluent lifestyles that we lead that overwhelmingly contribute to this problem. And to call it a problem is to understate what it really is. Which is a crime. Crime against the poorest and most marginalized people on this planet. We've never figured out, though God knows we've tried, a more effective way to destroy their lives. — Bill McKibben

Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel. — William Booth

Anger is the poorest of counselors, and revenge is suicide. — Elizabeth Blair Lee

The poorest Americans use three time the energy as the percentage of their income as the average American does. This is going to disproportionately hurt the poor. It may make the whole electric grid unstable, depending on how it is enforced. And it does nothing for the climate. — Charles Koch

How do you know if the next act you are about to do is the right one or the wrong one? Consider the face of the poorest and most vulnerable human being that you have ever chanced upon, and ask yourself if the act that you contemplate will be of benefit to that person; and if it will be, it's the right thing to do, and if not, rethink it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Think of the poorest person you know and see if your next act will be of any use to him. — Mahatma Gandhi

Social mobility decreased under Labour and under the current government it is reversing. The differences between the poorest and richest are returning to Victorian levels. We don't have open sewers and infant mortality rates at fifty percent but in economic terms we're getting to a level of disparity we haven't seen for a couple of hundred years. And we're getting there very quickly. — Jonathan Trigell

It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in child laws which are truly stupid ... These schools should get rid of unionized janitors, have one master janitor, pay local students to take care of the school. — Newt Gingrich

I don't want you stashing yourself away with your Smolny friends tonight," Maman said. "I want to see you dancing with lots of handsome young princes and grand dukes."
I rolled my eyes and stared out the window at the snow-covered city. I resolved to dance with the ugliest and the poorest men in the ballroom
if they should ask me. — Robin Bridges

He read me another poem, and another one - and he explained the true history of poetry, which is a kind of secret, a magic known only to wise men. Mr. Premier, I won't be saying anything new if I say that the history of the world is the history of a ten-thousand-year war of brains between the rich and the poor. Each side is eternally trying to hoodwink the other side: and it has been this way since the start of time. The poor win a few battles (the peeing in the potted plants, the kicking of the pet dogs, etc.) but of course the rich have won the war for ten thousand years. That's why, on day, some wise men, out of compassion for the poor, left them signs and symbols in poems, which appear to be about roses and pretty girls and things like that, but when understood correctly spill out secrets that allow the poorest man on earth to conclude the ten-thousand-year-old brain-war on terms favorable to himself. — Aravind Adiga

The Mongols consumed a steady diet of meat, milk, yogurt, and other dairy products, and they fought men who lived on gruel made from various grains. The grain diet of the peasant warriors stunted their bones, rotted their teeth, and left them weak and prone to disease. In contrast, the poorest Mongol soldier ate mostly protein, thereby giving him strong teeth and bones. — Jack Weatherford

Helena dreamed about the keepers of the fire. The poorest old women had stored it away in suburban kitchens and had only to blow very gently on their palms to rekindle the flame — Eduardo Galeano

The Untouchables, in modern times, had won the useless right of being touched by the high caste, but they remained the poorest in the city. Every — Manu Joseph

Want and effective demand are not the same thing. If they were, the poorest nations would be the ones to display the most vigorous demand. — Joseph A. Schumpeter

We must realize that our destiny is strongly linked to the destiny of the poorest on this planet. — Hillary Clinton

The little house is not too small
To shelter friends who come to call.
Though low the roof and small its space
It holds the Lord's abounding grace,
And every simple room may be
Endowed with happy memory.
The little house, severly plain,
A wealth of beauty may contain.
Within it those who dwell may find
High faith which makes for peace of mind,
And that sweet understanding which
Can make the poorest cottage rich.
The little house can hold all things
From which the soul's contentment springs.
'Tis not too small for love to grow,
For all the joys that mortals know,
For mirth and song and that delight
Which make the humblest dwelling bright. — Edgar A. Guest

As a graduate student Nathan Nunn, now a Harvard economist, began to compare different economies in modern Africa, and he found that the countries that lost more people to the slave trade were also the poorest countries today. How — Christine Kenneally

To live charitably means not looking out for our own interests, but carrying the burdens of the weakest and poorest among us. — Pope Francis

The gag rule must be eliminated, and it's just the gag rule, we're not talking now even about funding abortion. We're talking about, you know, counseling and speaking, so that's one. That can be reversed by an executive order. [George W.]Bush put it in the first day he got in office. We hope that [Barack] Obama takes it out. He had cut off funding for the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, even though Congress had appropriated. It is injured women who are the poorest of the poor. — Eleanor Smeal

AIDS destroys families, decimates communities and, particularly in the poorest areas of the world, threatens to destabilize the social, cultural, and economic fabric of entire nations ... — David Saperstein

I am positive that I would see the end of child labour around the world in my lifetime, as the poorest of the poor have realised that education is a tool that can empower them. — Kailash Satyarthi

Young women don't want to be called feminists because it's not sexy and ah they think that their mothers and grandmothers have achieved everything they want. They don't know how poor women live, how women in rural places live, how 80 percent of women in the world are the poorest of the poor, how still there are 27 million slaves, and most of them women and girls. — Isabel Allende

It is one of the poorest of human weaknesses that a man would be ashamed of saying he has done wrong instead of so ashamed of having done wrong that he cannot rest till he has said so. For the shame cleaves fast until the confession removes it. — George MacDonald

The UN special envoy on food called it a "crime against humanity" to funnel 100 million tons of grain and corn to ethanol while almost a billion people are starving. So what kind of crime is animal agriculture, which uses 756 million tons of grain and corn per year, much more than enough to adequately feed the 1.4 billion humans who are living in dire poverty? And that 756 million tons doesn't even include the fact that 98 percent of the 225-million-ton global soy crop is also fed to farmed animals. You're supporting vast inefficiency and pushing up the price of food for the poorest in the world, — Jonathan Safran Foer

In the poorest of the poor we see Jesus in distressed guise. — Mother Teresa

A man once told me, money was the pathway to success; he was the poorest man i know. — Nikki Rowe

The rich do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich; they need to invest enough so that these countries can get their foot on the economic ladder ... Economic development works. It can be successful. It tends to build on itself. But it must get started. — Jeffrey Sachs

The poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money. — John D. Rockefeller

The poorest man in the world is a man without a dream. — Myles Munroe

The politician is the poorest man in the world, the most empty man, the most hollow - stuffed with straw and nothing else. — Osho

I think I'm basically a liberal Conservative - I believe in low tax, spirit of free enterprise, and in making sure that we as politicians create the framework for business to produce the dosh that we're going to need to pay for the poorest. And the longer I live, the more I think that we all have a duty to each other. — Boris Johnson

It is interesting to note that the 200 richest people have more assets than the 2 billion poorest. — David Korten

Ah, no, ah, no. There, senor, you would be wrong. Knowing that after the first year the rent is liable not to be paid, we bury the poorest two feet down. It is less work, you understand? of course, we must judge by the family who owns a body. — Ray Bradbury

The poorest people in the world (particularly in low-lying areas) will suffer the most if we do not take action on climate change ... that calls for any tactic that might call attention to the problem. — Jason David Frank

In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar. — Thomas Jefferson

The most striking fact is no doubt that in all these societies, half of the population own virtually nothing: the poorest 50 percent invariably own less than 10 percent of national wealth, and generally less than 5 percent. — Thomas Piketty

Even the poorest among us deserves the dignity of equality. — The Prophet Of Life

You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Lavish thousands of dollars on your baby clothes, and after all the child is prettiest when every garment is laid aside. That becoming nakedness, at least, may adorn the chubby darling of the poorest home. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Capitalism has been called a system of greed - yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of. — Ayn Rand

99% of the casualties linked to climate change occur in developing countries. Worst hit are the world's poorest groups. While climate change will increasingly affect wealthy countries, the brunt of the impact is being borne by the poor, whose plight simply receives less attention. — Rajendra K. Pachauri

The people who are filing for bankruptcy in increasing numbers every year, it's not the poorest. It's not the people at the economic fringes. It's people who worked hard and played by the rules. — Elizabeth Warren

The poorest of the poor are those who feel that they are unloved. — Mother Teresa

and Clyde. Bolivia and Paraguay, the two poorest countries in South America, were fighting in the name of Standard Oil and Shell and bleeding over oil in the Chaco. — Anonymous

No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members. — Michael Eric Dyson

Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope. — Emma Goldman

I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this ... Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world had long before measured as lost or gone. Some of the people who were able to look at the dirtiest, the poorest, the gays, the straights, the drug users, those in recovery, the basest of sinners, and those who were just ... plain ... different.
They were able to look at them all and only see strength. Beauty. Potential. Hope.
And if we boil it down, isn't that what love actually is? — Dan Pearce

When historians get to write the truth about this completely unnecessary referendum [Brexit] they won't say it was a vote demanded by the British people to decide their national destiny. They will say it was the final battle in a decades-long Tory Civil War, at the heart of which was a fight to the death between two Old Etonians, David Cameron and Boris Johnson, for the hollow crown. A sort of Eton Wall Game. Where the poorest are put up against the wall and shot. — Brian Reade

The people with the best sense of what is essential to a community, of what gives and maintains its spirit, are often doing very humble, manual tasks. It is often the poorest person - the one who has a handica[p, is] ill or old - who is the most prophetic. People who carry responsibility must be close to them and know what they think, because it is often they who are free enough to see with the greatest clarity the needs, beauty and pain of the community. — Jean Vanier

When I came to Delhi first and said, "This is not India. And then I was taken to Varanasi and there I loved, loved the culture. It was a beautiful journey. The way the people dressed - even the poorest people, and the fabrics! With vegetable dyes, and I was fascinated by the color.But in the end I loved the men - all in white - so many shades of white. And I said, "What am I going to do? A color collection or a white collection?" I finally did a neutral white collection. — Donna Karan

Profound love demands a deep conception and out of this develops reverence for the mystery of life. It brings us close to all beings, to the poorest and smallest as well as all others. — Albert Schweitzer

A real Christian in an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. Security issue or no security issue, there would need to be a focus on it. — Helen Clark

8th-grade test scores. Kids in the richest quarter with low test scores are as likely to make it through college as kids in the poorest quarter with high scores (see chart). — Anonymous

Most rich people are the poorest people I know. — Elsa Maxwell

If we are all endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness, that has to apply to the poorest neighborhoods in the poorest counties, and I am prepared to find something that works, that breaks us out of the cycles we have now to find a way for poor children to work and earn honest money. — Newt Gingrich

It is when one begins to lose the consciousness of freedom, and when the idea of necessity enters the world at all, when there is any hurry or strain anywhere, a letter to be written or a train to catch, when you have got to work, to make the horses of the dream gallop, or to make the rifles go off, that the dream is declining, and turning into the nightmare, which belongs to the poorest and most vulgar class of dreams. — Karen Blixen

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

Humility makes a man richer than other men, and it makes a man judge himself the poorest among men. — Thomas Brooks

Minimum wage laws tragically generate unemployment, especially among the poorest and least skilled or educated workers ... Because a minimum wage, of course, does not guarantee any worker's employment; it only prohibits, by force of law, anyone from being hired at the wage which would pay his employer to hire him. — Murray Rothbard

Children are the best recorders of information - they miss nothing; but they are the poorest interpreters. — Sheila Walsh

The most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest. — Bill Gates