Quotes about Poverty

I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people.

When a poor person dies I want then to die in the arms of somebody who loves them. I want them to be able to look for the last time into the eyes of somebody who cares for them

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.

The war against hunger is truly mankind's war of liberation.

The poor do not need charity; they need inspiration. Charity only sends them a loaf of bread to keep them alive in their wretchedness, or gives them an entertainment to make them forget for an hour or two; but inspiration will cause them to rise out of their misery. If you want to help the poor, demonstrate to them that they can become rich; prove it by getting rich yourself.

If you want riches, you must refuse to accept any circumstance that leads toward poverty.

Poverty needs no plan. It needs no one to aid it, because it is bold and ruthless. Riches are shy and timid. They have to be attracted.

True it is that covetousness is rich, modesty starves.

When I was growing up in Alabama in the '50s, even though we were poor and the laws were against blacks, we still had a sense of morality.

It comforts everybody to think of all Negroes as dirt poor, and to regard those who were not, who earned good money and kept it, as some kind of shameful miracle. White people liked that idea because Negroes with money and sense made them nervous. Colored people liked it because, in those days, they trusted poverty, believed it was a virtue and a sure sign of honesty. Too much money had a whiff of evil and somebody else's blood.