Quotes about Poverty

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.

On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

The southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow, so that when he had no money for food, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than a black man.

What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?

A fortune for one man that was more than he needed should not be build on ten thousand ruined men who were left without the means of life.

If you want to know how fortunate you are, visit three places: the slum, the hospital, and the cemetery.

Charity is fortune, avarice is poverty, peace is treasure, and happiness is wealth.

You cannot warm the hearts of people with God's love if they have an empty stomach and cold feet.

Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

Get to know the poor in your country. Love them. Serve them.

The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.

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