Quotes about Poverty

We who are sometimes obsessed with social conscience can no longer imagine a world without it, or a society that regards the suffering of the poor and others as the "will of God.

I consider the homeless just as important as the richest of the rich.

The Lord only knows how many times I let my children go hungry rather than take secretly the bread I liked not to ask for.

For a matter of seconds, he felt an immense satisfaction that he could talk of suffering to them now without hypocrisy--it is hard for the sleek and well-fed priest to praise poverty.

The curious beauty of African music is that it uplifts even as it tells a sad tale. You may be poor, you may have only a ramshackle house, you may have lost your job, but that song gives you hope.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

The poor in our countries have been shut out of our minds and driven from the mainstream of our societies, because we have allowed them to become invisible.

A sharp decline in actual deprivation may, paradoxically, have been accompanied by an ongoing and even escalating sense of fear of deprivation.

We are seekers of beauty, but avoid extravagance. We admire learning, but are unimpressed by pedantry. For us, wealth is an aim for its value when used, not as an empty boast. And the disgrace of poverty lies not in the admission of it, but more in the failure to avoid it in practice.

They wander on earth and live in heaven, and although they are weak, they protect the world; they taste of peace in the midst of turmoil; they are poor, and yet they have all they want. They stand in suffering and remain in joy, they appear dead to all outward sense and lead a life of faith within.

The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.

The basis of spiritual community is truth, the basis of emotional community is desire. The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from everyday Christian life in community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; for in the poor sister or brother, Christ is knocking at the door.