Explore Quotes on Poverty

Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head.

The key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. The ladder of development hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.

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.

Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.

Every morning our newspapers could read, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.' How? The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack antimalarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, sad stories rarely get written.

All of the incessant debate about development assistance, and whether the rich are doing enough to help the poor, actually concerns less than 1% of rich world income. The effort required of the rich is indeed so slight that to do less is to announce brazenly to a large part of the world: 'You count for nothing.' We should not be surprised, then, if in later years the rich reap the whirlwind of that heartless response.

If poverty is a disease that infects the entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation . We have to heal that entire community.

Small loans can transform lives, especially the lives of women and children. The poor can become empowered instead of disenfranchised. Homes can be built, jobs can be created, businesses can be launched, and individuals can feel a sense of worth again.

Until it's understood to involve justice for those in poverty, a future for generations yet unborn, and a commitment to the rest of creation, it's unlikely we'll be able to overcome the status quo.

Such is the scale and depth of poverty in many parts of the world that it won't be ended overnight. That is why if, like me, you want to see an end to poverty, you need to be in it for the long haul.

We're looking at the singular condition of poverty. All the other individual problems spring from that condition... doesn't matter if it's death, aid, trade, AIDS, famine, instability, governance, corruption or war. All of that is poverty. Our problem is that everybody tries to heal each of the individual aspects of poverty, not poverty itself.

It's quite possible to arrive in the year 2030 where people are no longer dying of poverty. We could actually help lead a global end-not a reduction, but an end-to absolute poverty...I have always found that a committed, powerful group of leaders, can make a huge difference.

Of course I am frustrated with regard to extreme poverty, to violence that never seems to cease. Greed is the key. It's easy to sit in relative luxury and peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third World debts. Not many of us are willing to give up everything we have. We can however give some, and millions of people do, governments do, but there is so much more to be done.

By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.

The good news is we have the technology and the tools to alleviate poverty on a global scale. All that is standing in our way is education and will.

Wars are bred by poverty and oppression. Continued peace is possible only in a relatively free and prosperous world.

There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking, or smoking and socializing and more time working.

Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

There is only one rule by which to judge if God is near us or is far away - the rule that God's word is giving us today: everyone concerned for the hungry, the naked, the poor, for those who have vanished in police custody, for the tortured, for prisoners, for all flesh that suffers, has God close at hand. We have the ability, we have the means, and we have the capacity to eliminate hunger from the face of the earth. We need only the will.

Witnessing the extreme poverty in remote parts of Affrica can make you feel sad and powerless until you realize how little it takes to change these people's lives fundamentally in sustainable ways.

Through periodic increases over the next three decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, the nation achieved one of the fundamental goals of a just society, which is that no one who works for a living should have to live in poverty.