Quotes on Poor

there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?

Just because a child's parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.

I will never tire of repeating this: what the poor need the most is not pity but love. They need to feel respect for their human dignity, which is neither less nor different from the dignity of any other human being.

The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.

Want to depose the government of a poor country with resources? Want to bash Muslims? Want to build support for American military interventions around the world? Want to undermine governments that are raising their people up from poverty because they don't conform to the tastes of Upper West Side intellectuals? Use human rights as your excuse!

These places I've seen have clubbed my mind - they are so poor and depressing. I don't know what we can do to help these people, but we've got to do something.

...in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself.

An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.

We have to have powder for our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.

...it is seldom indeed that a composition which was poor when the picture was taken can be improved by reshaping it in the dark room.

Not only our future economic soundness but the very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch's soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated.

In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food

I would not be you for a kingdom.' The remark was too naïve to rouse anger; I merely said - 'Very good.' 'And what would you give to be ME?' she inquired. 'Not a bad sixpence - strange as it may sound', I replied. 'You are but a poor creature.' 'You don't think so in your heart.' 'No; for in my heart you have not the outline of a place: I only occasionally turn you over in my brain.

Growing up on our estate, we were all different colours, but we were all really poor. I never really realised that black was a problem for some people.

By experts in poverty I do not mean sociologists, but poor men.

One may well find oneself beginning to doubt whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at utter random...nevertheless although the miracle of life stands "explained" it does not strike us as any less miraculous. As Francois Mauriac wrote, What this professor says is far more incredible than what we poor Christians believe.

The difference between blues, jazz, rock n' roll and rap is that rap stayed poor. Even the white rappers are poor. It's scarier to look at poor people; it makes everyone uncomfortable. Their pain is something that people would like to see swept under the rug.

My father was a man of great charity towards the poor, and compassion for the sick, and also for servants; so much so, that he never could be persuaded to keep slaves, for he pitied them so much: and a slave belonging to one of his brothers being once in his house, was treated by him with as much tenderness as his own children.