Poverty Quotes

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

Henry David Thoreau

As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid.

Oscar Wilde

In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.

Oscar Wilde

Poverty is a wonderful thing. It sticks to a man after all his friends have forsaken him.

Proverb

Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth

Mark Twain

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.

John Berger

Empty pockets make empty heads.

William Carlos Williams

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

George Orwell

Poverty has no greater foe than bashfulness.

Proverb

When poverty comes in the door love flies out the window.

Proverb

I have found out in later years that my family was very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn't know it. On his childhood

Dwight D Eisenhower

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Walter Bagehot

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

Plato

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

Aristotle

The hermit doesn't sleep at night, in love with the blue of the vacant moon. The cool of the breeze that rustles the trees rustles him too.

ChingAn

What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires -- how many aspirations after goodness and truth -- how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause!

Walt Whitman

Poverty is what I'm writing about.

George Orwell

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

Denis Diderot

Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue; it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright

Benjamin Franklin

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.

Leo Tolstoy