6bdd2e8
|
I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.
|
|
poverty
wealth
reality
love
knowing
fame
teach
facts
school
|
Neil Gaiman |
4c00620
|
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!
|
|
poverty
heartbreak
heart
love
misconceptions
plainness
parting
obscurity
jane-eyre
soul
|
Charlotte Brontë |
790a068
|
What a weary time those years were -- to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability.
|
|
poverty
youth
|
Charles Bukowski |
a0c492b
|
That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.
|
|
poverty
wealth
sorrow
greed
cring
fables
tears
|
Khaled Hosseini |
1f39723
|
I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely.
|
|
poverty
rich
poor
mental-illness
|
Charles Bukowski |
1f83763
|
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
|
|
poverty
social-institutions
society
|
Charles Darwin |
26202f8
|
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
|
|
poverty
philosophy
noble
|
Jean-Jacques Rousseau |
7a185f0
|
"American humorist Kin Hubbard said , "It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be". The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue... Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves."
|
|
poverty
|
Kurt Vonnegut |
386e102
|
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.... It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.
|
|
poverty
|
Kurt Vonnegut |
32f6f52
|
Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
|
|
poverty
inspirational
|
Mother Teresa |
625b856
|
I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime. It does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuates the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. It is a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of those conditions--poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, greed--which are at the root of most punished crime. The crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. It must surely be a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit that even a small number of those men and women in the hell of the prison system survive it and hold on to their humanity.
|
|
racism
poverty
greed
criminal-justice-system
cycle-of-violence
imprisonment
retribution
homelessness
unemployment
jail
incarceration
punishment
justice
prison
desperation
|
Howard Zinn |
6eacc8e
|
"You're broke, eh?" I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate."
|
|
money
poverty
|
Raymond Chandler |
6bede37
|
The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitations services and basic education to every person on the planet. And we wonder why terrorists attack us.
|
|
poverty
|
John Perkins |
78a1738
|
The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn't have to be another country. It can be the past instead--the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?
|
|
poverty
imperialism
race
inequality
colonialism
|
Kurt Vonnegut |
0ec2362
|
Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.
|
|
poverty
wealth
satisfaction
possessions
longing
|
Alain de Botton |
e7a09f4
|
You can't eat straight A's.
|
|
poverty
school
|
Maxine Hong Kingston |
b88cd8d
|
Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope.
|
|
poverty
work
knowledge
memory
|
George Eliot |
08b9e25
|
We're not stupid! We're just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction
|
|
poverty
stupidity
|
Orhan Pamuk |
349317a
|
Last time I talked to her she didn't sound like herself. She's depressed. It's awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they're no good.
|
|
poverty
self-esteem
|
Barbara Kingsolver |
92ebe14
|
People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.
|
|
poverty
wealth
religion
god
i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings
maya-angelou
belief
|
Maya Angelou |
6c84f9b
|
"Every condition exists," Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, "simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum." Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate."
|
|
poverty
social-justice
|
Matthew Desmond |
bb19569
|
"There is something deeply hypocritical in a society that holds an inner-city child only eight years old "accountable" for her performance on a high-stakes standardized exam but does not hold the high officials of our government accountable for robbing her of what they gave their own kids six or seven years before." --
|
|
poverty
education
standardized-tests
government
|
Jonathan Kozol |
d10c19c
|
"The biggest potential for helping us overcome shame is this: We are "those people." The truth is...we are the others. Most of us are one paycheck, one divorce, one drug-addicted kid, one mental health illness, one sexual assault, one drinking binge, one night of unprotected sex, or one affair away from being "those people"-the ones we don't trust, the ones we pity, the ones we don't let our kids play with, the ones bad things happen to, the ones we don't want living next door."
|
|
poverty
addiction
divorce
shame
|
Brené Brown |
a3b00ff
|
What sense would it make to classify a man as handicapped because he is in a wheelchair today, if he is expected to be walking again in a month, and competing in track meets before the year is out? Yet Americans are generally given 'class' labels on the basis of their transient location in the income stream. If most Americans do not stay in the same broad income bracket for even a decade, their repeatedly changing 'class' makes class itself a nebulous concept. Yet the intelligentsia are habituated, if not addicted, to seeing the world in class terms.
|
|
poverty
politics
class-warfare
|
Thomas Sowell |
9faeca3
|
How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows--this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That's what things look like in our cities at present
|
|
money
poverty
wealth
courage
class-warfare
neighborhoods
urban
urbanization
poor
cowardice
inequality
oppression
|
Robert Walser |
664fd64
|
HIGGINS. Have you no morals, man? DOOLITTLE [unabashed] Cant afford them, Governor. Neither could you if you was as poor as me.
|
|
poverty
social-class
|
George Bernard Shaw |
f0832e4
|
But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution.
|
|
poverty
|
Barbara Ehrenreich |
d833a65
|
All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.
|
|
mankind
war
poverty
change
pulitzer-prize
war-reporting
detachment
journalism
civilization
|
David Baldacci |
ec02599
|
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. --Aristotle
|
|
poverty
|
Cornel West |
2967688
|
Abundance isn't God's provision for me to live in luxury. It's his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven.
|
|
money
poverty
wealth
heaven
christianity
god
provision
stewardship
sharing
riches
luxury
help
kingdom
|
Randy Alcorn |
c8e6907
|
"Royce Westmoreland stared at him with biting scorn. "I despise hypocrisy, particularly when it is coated with holiness." "May I ask for a specific example?" "Fat priests," Royce replied, "with fat purses, who lecture staving peasants on the dangers of gluttony and the merits of poverty."
|
|
poverty
hypocrisy
|
Judith McNaught |
3d2a64d
|
So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century--the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light--are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;--in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use. HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862. [Translation by Isabel F. Hapgood]
|
|
poverty
political
les-misérables
society
victor-hugo
|
Victor Hugo |
3e86697
|
That's the myth of it, the required lie that allows us to render our judgments. Parasites, criminals, dope fiends, dope peddlers, whores--when we can ride past them at Fayette and Monroe, car doors locked, our field of vision cautiously restricted to the road ahead, then the long journey into darkness is underway. Pale-skinned hillbillies and hard-faced yos, toothless white trash and gold-front gangsters--when we can glide on and feel only fear, we're well on the way. And if, after a time, we can glimpse the spectacle of the corner and manage nothing beyond loathing and contempt, then we've arrived at last at that naked place where a man finally sees the sense in stretching razor wire and building barracks and directing cattle cars into the compound. It's a reckoning of another kind, perhaps, and one that becomes a possibility only through the arrogance and certainty that so easily accompanies a well-planned and well-tended life. We know ourselves, we believe in ourselves; from what we value most, we grant ourselves the illusion that it's not chance in circumstance, that opportunity itself isn't the defining issue. We want the high ground; we want our own worth to be acknowledged. Morality, intelligence, values--we want those things measured and counted. We want it to be about Us. Yes, if we were down there, if we were the damned of the American cities, we would not fail. We would rise above the corner. And when we tell ourselves such things, we unthinkably assume that we would be consigned to places like Fayette Street fully equipped, with all the graces and disciplines, talents and training that we now posses. Our parents would still be our parents, our teachers still our teachers, our broker still our broker. Amid the stench of so much defeat and despair, we would kick fate in the teeth and claim our deserved victory. We would escape to live the life we were supposed to live, the life we are living now. We would be saved, and as it always is in matters of salvation, we know this as a matter of perfect, pristine faith. Why? The truth is plain: We were not born to be niggers.
|
|
hatred
prejudice
lies
poverty
fear
the-american-dream
delusion
society
race
|
David Simon |
2acec2b
|
Does rough weather choose men over women? Does the sun beat on men, leaving women nice and cool?' Nyawira asked rather sharply. 'Women bear the brunt of poverty. What choices does a woman have in life, especially in times of misery? She can marry or live with a man. She can bear children and bring them up, and be abused by her man. Have you read Buchi Emecheta of Nigeria, Joys of Motherhood? Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe, say, Nervous Conditions? Miriama Ba of Senegal, So Long A Letter? Three women from different parts of Africa, giving words to similar thoughts about the condition of women in Africa.' 'I am not much of a reader of fiction,' Kamiti said. 'Especially novels by African women. In India such books are hard to find.' 'Surely even in India there are women writers? Indian women writers?' Nyawira pressed. 'Arundhati Roy, for instance, The God of Small Things? Meena Alexander, Fault Lines? Susie Tharu. Read Women Writing in India. Or her other book, We Were Making History, about women in the struggle!' 'I have sampled the epics of Indian literature,' Kamiti said, trying to redeem himself. 'Mahabharata, Ramayana, and mostly Bhagavad Gita. There are a few others, what they call Purana, Rig-Veda, Upanishads ... Not that I read everything, but ...' 'I am sure that those epics and Puranas, even the Gita, were all written by men,' Nyawira said. 'The same men who invented the caste system. When will you learn to listen to the voices of women?
|
|
poverty
feminism
suffering
women
arundhati-roy
buchi-emecheta
indian-literature
meena-alexander
miriama-ba
susie-tharu
tsitsi-dangarembga
novels
gender-equality
women-s-fiction
women-writers
|
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o |
925d2d1
|
"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is noth-ing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes tocondemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
|
|
poverty
materialism
|
Charles Dickens |
c382297
|
"A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, "Get a boat!"
|
|
poverty
objectivism
jobs
homelessness
|
Daniel Quinn |
68387b7
|
Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
|
|
poverty
|
Richard Wright |
5611d93
|
Many skills, as every successful entrepreneur knows, cannot be taught in school. They require doing. Sometimes a life of doing. And where money-making is concerned, nothing compresses the time frame needed to leap from my-shit-just-sits-there-until-it-rains poverty to which-of-my-toilets-shall-I-use affluence like an apprenticeship with someone who already has the angles all figured out.
|
|
poverty
success
shit
school
|
Mohsin Hamid |
4d77fd2
|
I don't like dealing with money transactions in poor countries. I get confused between the feeling that I shouldn't haggle with poverty and getting ripped off
|
|
poverty
travel
haggling
|
Alex Garland |
bf5442a
|
m ldhy yq`dk?.. lfqr?.. l`wz?.. wlkn lfqr hw ldhy ySn` lfnn. whw 'mr lbd mnh fy lbdy@. nk lan nsn mhml, l yHtj lyk 'Hd, wl yHtj 'Hd 'n y`rfk.. tlk hy lHy@..
|
|
poverty
|
Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
ae87922
|
I thought society would do the right thing. Now I look around and I think -- society never does the right thing. Sometimes people do the right thing. Sometimes one person makes a difference. But civilization has rules, and I've learned them well -- never be helpless, never be sick, never be poor.
|
|
human-rights
poverty
kindness
society
helplessness
health
sickness
|
Christina Dodd |
4a17883
|
The poor are always rich in children, and in the dirt and ditches of this street there are groups of them from morning to night, hungry, naked and dirty. Children are the living flowers of the earth, but these had the appearance of flowers that have faded prematurely, because they grew in ground where there was no healthy nourishment.
|
|
poverty
|
Maxim Gorky |
f17ba88
|
They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar
|
|
poverty
class
society
|
Henry David Thoreau |
5e1aeb6
|
..I began speaking.. First, I took issue with the media's characterization of the post-Katrina New Orleans as resembling the third world as its poor citizens clamored for a way out. I suggested that my experience in New Orleans working with the city's poorest people in the years before the storm had reflected the reality of third-world conditions in New Orleans, and that Katrina had not turned New Orleans into a third-world city but had only revealed it to the world as such. I explained that my work, running Reprieve, a charity that brought lawyers and volunteers to the Deep South from abroad to work on death penalty issues, had made it clear to me that much of the world had perceived this third-world reality, even if it was unnoticed by our own citizens. To try answer Ryan's question, I attempted to use my own experience to explain that for many people in New Orleans, and in poor communities across the country, the government was merely an antagonist, a terrible landlord, a jailer, and a prosecutor. As a lawyer assigned to indigent people under sentence of death and paid with tax dollars, I explained the difficulty of working with clients who stand to be executed and who are provided my services by the state, not because they deserve them, but because the Constitution requires that certain appeals to be filed before these people can be killed. The state is providing my clients with my assistance, maybe the first real assistance they have ever received from the state, so that the state can kill them. I explained my view that the country had grown complacent before Hurricane Katrina, believing that the civil rights struggle had been fought and won, as though having a national holiday for Martin Luther King, or an annual march by politicians over the bridge in Selma, Alabama, or a prosecution - forty years too late - of Edgar Ray Killen for the murder of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, were any more than gestures. Even though President Bush celebrates his birthday, wouldn't Dr. King cry if he could see how little things have changed since his death? If politicians or journalists went to Selma any other day of the year, they would see that it is a crumbling city suffering from all of the woes of the era before civil rights were won as well as new woes that have come about since. And does anyone really think that the Mississippi criminal justice system could possibly be a vessel of social change when it incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than almost any place in the world, other than Louisiana and Texas, and then compels these prisoners, most of whom are black, to work prison farms that their ancestors worked as chattel of other men? ... I hoped, out loud, that the post-Katrina experience could be a similar moment [to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fiasco], in which the American people could act like the children in the story and declare that the emperor has no clothes, and hasn't for a long time. That, in light of Katrina, we could be visionary and bold about what people deserve. We could say straight out that there are people in this country who are racist, that minorities are still not getting a fair shake, and that Republican policies heartlessly disregard the needs of individual citizens and betray the common good. As I stood there, exhausted, in front of the thinning audience of New Yorkers, it seemed possible that New Orleans's destruction and the suffering of its citizens hadn't been in vain.
|
|
poverty
new-orleans
|
Billy Sothern |
49bf4c7
|
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.
|
|
poverty
activism
evil
|
Henry David Thoreau |
06d61eb
|
Furnishing was not a priority in the Citadel. Shelves, stools, tables... There was a rumor among the novices that priests towards the top of the hierarchy had golden furniture, but there was no sign of it here. The room was as severe as anything in the novices' quarters although it had, perhaps, a more opulent severity; it wasn't the forced bareness of poverty, but the starkness of intent.
|
|
poverty
humor
opulent
furniture
stark
|
Terry Pratchett |
ed6f207
|
The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.
|
|
poverty
leprosy
heresy
|
Umberto Eco |
f39b7d2
|
And every historic effort to forge a democratic project has been undermined by two fundamental realities: poverty and paranoia. The persistence of poverty generates levels of despair that deepen social conflict the escalation of paranoia produces levels of distrust that reinforce cultural division. Rae is the most explosive issue in American life precisely because it forces us to confront the tragic facts of poverty and paranoia despair, and distrust. In short, a candid examination of race matters takes us to the core of the crisis of American democracy (p. 107).
|
|
poverty
race
democracy
|
Cornel West |
6504f76
|
For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign.
|
|
poverty
leprosy
exclusion
|
Umberto Eco |
f00ab2d
|
One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could get away with it, and that everyone else--housewives, taxi-drivers, elevator boys, dishwashers, bartenders, lawyers, judges, doctors, and grocers--would never, by the operation of any generous human feeling, cease to use you as an outlet for his frustrations and hostilities.
|
|
racism
poverty
|
James Baldwin |
d1045cd
|
The world went on. People left and people died and people went to memorial services and put orange blocks of cheese into their purses. People confessed to you that they were hungry all the time. And then you got up in the morning and pretended that none of it had happened.
|
|
poverty
perserverance
|
Kate DiCamillo |
6b48fca
|
I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost.
|
|
poverty
wealth
|
Mohsin Hamid |
f65615f
|
"They" hate us because they feel--and "they" are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on. We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to one. We even do it in our own country. Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum-wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered. So if we do it to our own, what chance do foreigners have?"
|
|
violence
poverty
suffering
hate
extremism
irresponsible
poverty-and-politics
third-world
passive-aggressive
ignorance
|
Bill Maher |
085e644
|
The worker picked up Pakhom's spade, dug a grave, and buried him - six feet from head to heel, exactly the amount of land a man needs.
|
|
poverty
wealth
greed
living
life
life-and-death
dying
|
Leo Tolstoy |
7d2858b
|
"They" hate us because they feel--and "they" are not wrong--that it is within our power to do so much more, and that we practice a kind of passive-aggressive violence on the Third World. We do this by, for example, demonizing tobacco as poison here while promoting cigarettes in Asia; inflating produce prices by paying farmers not to grow food as millions go hungry worldwide; skimping on quality and then imposing tariffs on foreign products made better or cheaper than our own; padding corporate profits through Third World sweatshops; letting drug companies stand by as millions die of AIDS in Africa to keep prices up on lifesaving drugs; and on and on. We do, upon reaching a very high comfort level, mostly choose to go from ten to eleven instead of helping another guy far away go from zero to one. We even do it in our own country. Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book describes the impossibility of living with dignity or comfort as one of the millions of minimum-wage workers in fast food, aisle-stocking and table-waiting jobs. Their labor for next to nothing ensures that well-off people can be a little more pampered. So if we do it to our own, what chance do foreigners have?" --
|
|
violence
poverty
suffering
hate
extremism
irresponsible
poverty-and-politics
third-world
passive-aggressive
ignorance
|
Bill Maher |
f11bfd6
|
Charity is salt in the wound. It is painful. The state gives charity with the bitter hatred of a victim to his blackmailer. The receiver of free money is subjected to harassment, insult, and profound humiliation. Newspapers are enlisted to heap scorn on the arrogant bastards who choose to beg instead of starve or let their children starve. It is made clear that the poor seek charity as a great and sordid chicanery in which they delight. And there are some who do. As there are people who take delight in sticking hot needles deep into their abdomens, swallow pieces of broken bottles. A special taste. Speaking for humanity in general, the poor accept charity with a shame and loss of self-respect that is truly pitiful.
|
|
poverty
media
|
Mario Puzo |
a6af6ad
|
Only the poor are handicapped by honor.
|
|
poverty
|
Naguib Mahfouz |
23bbae4
|
"I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particular God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not merely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: until now I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union or Poland or the Baltic states. In your country I see an abundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. But there's a difference between our countries that is also a similarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has different faces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don't have the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for your survival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, and I would not want to exchange that for your abundance."
|
|
poverty
religion
|
Henning Mankell |
be3647c
|
People in that crowd want to make poverty history, but NOT if they have to pay for it themselves
|
|
poverty
|
ben elton |
8380362
|
Contrary to what the West seems to think, it is not poverty that brings people like us so close to God. It's the fact that no one is more curious than we are to learn why we are here on earth and what will happen to us in the next world.
|
|
poverty
religion
islam
|
Orhan Pamuk |
19648b7
|
The one who is doing his work and getting satisfaction from it is not the one the poverty is hard on.
|
|
poverty
work
chapter-5
the-writing-life
paris
|
Ernest Hemingway |
5cd1407
|
Do not really like rich people, as they make us poor people feel dopey and inadequate. Not that we are poor. I would say we are middle. We are very, very lucky. I know that. But still, it is not right that rich people make us middle people feel dopey and inadequate.
|
|
poverty
wealth
rich
poor
|
George Saunders |
961b4fa
|
You see, it is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one. When disparities become too great, a superior right, that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich.
|
|
poverty
wealth
politics
life
stealing
rights
crime
|
Mohsin Hamid |
181fc05
|
"We were poor back then. Not living in a cardboard carton poor, not "we might have to eat the dog" poor, but still poor. Poor like, no insurance poor, and going to McDonald's was a really big excitement poor, wearing socks for gloves in the winter poor, and collecting nickels and dimes from the washing machine because she never got allowance, that kind of poor... poor enough to be nostalgic about poverty. So, when my mom and dad took me here for my tenth birthday, it was a really big deal. They'd saved up for two months to take me to the photography store and they bought me a Kodak Instamatic film camera... I really miss those days, because we were still a real family back then... this mall doesn't even have a film photography store anymore, just a cell phone and digital camera store, it's depressing..."
|
|
poverty
future
past
cardboard
coins
washing-machine
instamatic
kodak
cape-breton
nova-scotia
mcdonald-s
camera
digital
birthday
mall
canada
nostalgic
shopping
film
poor
insurance
wishes
dog
nostalgia
|
Rebecca McNutt |
00e3e2e
|
The poor young man must work for his bread; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing left but reverie. He enters God's theater free; he sees the sky, space, the stars, the flowers, the children, the humanity in which he suffers, the creation in which he shines. He looks at humanity so much that he sees the soul, he looks at creation so much that he sees God. He dreams, he feels that he is great; he dreams some more, and he feels that he is tender. From the egotism of the suffering man, he passes to the compassion of the contemplating man. A wonderful feeling springs up within him, forgetfulness of self, and pity for all. In thinking of the countless enjoyments nature offers, gives, and gives lavishly to open souls and refuses to closed souls, he, a millionaire of intelligence, comes to grieve for the millionaires of money. All hatred leaves his heart as all light enters his mind. And is he unhappy? No. The poverty of a young man is never miserable.
|
|
poverty
suffering
nature
humanity
god
reverie
contemplation
poor
soul
creation
|
Victor Hugo |
f6cb304
|
For avarice begins where poverty ends.
|
|
poverty
greed
|
Honoré de Balzac |
d2aee33
|
She missed -- without knowing what she missed-- paints and crayons
|
|
poverty
culture
|
Toni Morrison |
472ee8e
|
Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.
|
|
poverty
development
economics
|
William Easterly |
6c12118
|
There are many forms of poverty: economic poverty, physical poverty, emotional poverty, mental poverty, and spiritual poverty. As long as we relate primarily to each other's wealth, health, stability, intelligence, and soul strength, we cannot develop true community. Community is not a talent show in which we dazzle the world with our combined gifts. Community is the place where our poverty is acknowledged and accepted, not as something we have to learn to cope with as best as we can but as a true source of new life. Living community in whatever form - family, parish, twelve-step program, or intentional community - challenges us to come together at the place of our poverty, believing that there we can reveal our richness.
|
|
poverty
|
Henri J.M. Nouwen |
870a516
|
I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.
|
|
poverty
|
George Eliot |
e513a31
|
"As they were walking, a beggar came up, holding his hand out and crying, "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!" Mike kept on going but Mitchell stopped. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out twenty paise and placed it in the beggar's dirty hand. Mike said, "I used to give to beggars when I first came here. But then I realized, it's hopeless. It never stops." "Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you," Mitchell said. "Yeah, well," Mike said, "obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta."
|
|
poverty
jesus
calcutta
charity
poor
|
Jeffrey Eugenides |
d542bc8
|
Don't pack your bags just yet, stay awhile, Don't try to run away to higher ground, You're in my twisted clouds of sad misfortune, And you are such an entertaining crowd! (I've never had such cheerful toys to play with...) Forget I said that - just a little natural disaster Humour, Ha-ha-ha. Pull up a rusty lawn chair On the waterfront in New Orleans, And ignore the wind that howls, Things aren't always as they seem. I can smell fear in the air, Fresh amidst the cornbread steam, Forgive me if I sound excited, (I'm going to be famous, you know!) And let me take your money, please! I'll drown your family, hunt down your pets, I've got tricks that I've never even tried yet, And it's so easy when I get the chance! (I'll swipe your house in just one glance!) As the saying goes, it all comes out in the wash, But I'm the only wash that leaves no stone unturned, Financial devastation is my middle name, And social degradation is my third! You, little boy from the bayou bank, You used to fish for pointless fun (I can appreciate having fun), But after I go, you'll find your parents poor, You'll have eviction notices on your door, You'll have to sell any fish you can catch, In a desperate grasp for money, Although I hate to break it to you, That bayou's polluted, honey! I see nothing in your future but welfare cheques! And you there, little girl with the closet of toys, You were born well-off with a room of your own, You have dresses that look more like They're from fairy-tales, Glittery lace on your schoolgirl gowns. Wait 'till murky water licks those hems, And your family is bankrupt And you're homeless with them! Accept what's to come, won't you please? I'm just a carousel of wild winds Who'll bring you to your knees! Hell, yeah! Take a bow, take a bow, Take a bow before your god... I might just pardon you If you've got magic up your sleeve! If you're swift and resourceful you could outrun me! I always love a challenge! I always love a game... The question on your mind Is in regards to my first name, Right? My name is Katrina, the witch of the skies, A sorceress whose debut dance makes everyone die, I know it's not what you wanted! (But I'm selfish through and through), So, c'mon and make me happy! Whether you're ready or not...
|
|
poverty
dark-poetry
hurricane-katrina
natural-disaster
southern
hurricane
welfare
witch
|
Rebecca McNutt |
a7b5135
|
In all Thenardier's outpourings, the words and gestures, the fury blazing in his eyes, this explosion of an evil nature brazenly exposed, the mixture of bravado and abjectness, arrogance, pettiness, rage, absurdity; the hodgepodge of genuine distress, and lying sentiment, the shamelessness of a vicious man rejoicing in viciousness, the bare crudity of an ugly soul -- in this eruption of all suffering and hatred there was something which was hideous as evil itself and still as poignant as truth.
|
|
good-and-evil
poverty
suffering
|
Victor Hugo |
710928a
|
The Poverty Tour provided the opportunity to meet many people who had been living paycheck to paycheck even before the economic downturn. To so quickly slide from the great middle into the underworld of the poor validated our suspicions that perhaps these citizens never really were bona fide, middle class Americans. Indeed, some economists assert that the middle class evaporated decades ago.
|
|
poverty
race
|
Cornel West |
a23c935
|
A man will seek to express his relation to the stars; but when a man's consciousness has been riveted upon obtaining a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is as important as the stars.
|
|
poverty
|
Richard Wright |
9fb72d5
|
I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou!
|
|
money
poverty
|
Victor Hugo |
311a7e8
|
The people are suffering. Relieving people's poverty ought to be handled as though one were rescuing them from fire, or saving them from drowning. One cannot hesitate.
|
|
poverty
suffering
|
Kim Stanley Robinson |
1b7e8b4
|
Trapnel wanted, among other things, to be a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a sage, a virtuoso, a good chap, a man of honour, a hard case, a spendthrift, an opportunist, a raisonneur; to be very rich, to be very poor, to possess a thousand mistresses, to win the heart of one love to whom he was ever faithful, to be on the best of terms with all men, to avenge savagely the lightest affront, to live to a hundred full of years and honour, to die young and unknown but recognized the following day as the most neglected genius of the age. Each of these ambitions had something to recommend it from one angle or another, with the possible exception of being poor - the only aim Trapnel achieved with unqualified mastery - and even being poor, as Trapnel himself asserted, gave the right to speak categorically when poverty was discussed by people like Evadne Clapham.
|
|
poverty
dandy
artist
|
Anthony Powell |
5e0ac1e
|
"Seeing myself or my church or my denomination as "the blessing" -- like so many mission trips to help "those less fortunate than ourselves" -- can easily descend into a blend of benevolence and paternalism. We can start to see the "poor" as supporting characters in a big story about how noble, selfless, and helpful we are."
|
|
poverty
self-centeredness
|
Nadia Bolz-Weber |
442dcdb
|
Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he's far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can't afford self-doubt and he can't let other people's opinions, even a father's, keep him from writing.
|
|
poverty
writing
motivation
|
Wallace Stegner |
271b5fb
|
"Well, gentlemen, I have listened to all your Solutions, and I now inform you that I, and I alone, except perhaps for Walt Trowbridge and the ghost of Pareto, have the perfect, the inevitable, the only Solution, and that is: There is no Solution! There will never be a state of society anything like perfect! "There never will be a time when there won't be a large proportion of people who feel poor no matter how much they have, and envy their neighbors who know how to wear cheap clothes showily, and envy their neighbors who can dance or make love or digest better."
|
|
perfection
poverty
politics
solutions
envy
society
utopia
|
Sinclair Lewis |
c43a307
|
The trouble with good fortune is that people tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and as well for others, we think they must have done something to have brought it on themselves. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, what but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness, and to find equality where none may have existed in the past.
|
|
poverty
inspirational
inequality
|
Ann Patchett |
338905f
|
The walls were chipped and needed paint. The windows were mostly okay but one pane was blocked with cardboard. There were fleas the exterminator couldn't kill and rats that scrabbled in the walls and mice who left droppings like a cocked snook and roaches that thrived on insecticide, even the illegal kinds.
|
|
poverty
pests
|
John Brunner |
6cb19c7
|
Poverty has in its favour an exquisite sleep filled with beautiful dreams.
|
|
poverty
hope
|
Honoré de Balzac |
ca97fea
|
The important question of how poverty can be remedied is one which agitates and torments modern societies especially
|
|
poverty
|
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
d4fba48
|
Poverty may be a privilege and even a way of life for the monk in the desert,for he has only himself to sustain and none but his god to please, but I consider poverty to be the mark of lack of ability or lack of ambition.I am not deficient in either of these qualities!
|
|
poverty
dream
encouragement-and-attitude
|
Og Mandino |
0120665
|
Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world.
|
|
poverty
opportunity
juvenile-delinquency
juvenile-justice-system
single-parenting
criminals
direction
|
Ta-Nehisi Coates |
092a5bf
|
And the child--your child--was born there in the midst of misery. It was a deadly place: strange, everything was strange, we women lying there were strange to each other, lonely and hating one another out of misery, the same torment in that crowded ward full of chloroform and blood, screams and groans.
|
|
poverty
letter-from-an-unknown-woman
maternity-ward
misery
|
Stefan Zweig |
d7ddd9f
|
A majority of people in these surveys also said that America gives too much aid--but when they were asked how much America should give, the median answers ranged from 5 percent to 10 percent of government spending. In other words, people wanted foreign aid 'cut' to an amount five to ten times greater than the United States actually gives!
|
|
poverty
foreign-aid
moral-philosophy
ethics
|
Peter Singer |
d9a4bc1
|
Why they were loaded with bags of beans and peas and anything else they happened to pick up when they were still some distance away from the street where the first blind man and his wife lived, for that is where they are going, is a question that could only occur to someone who has never in his life suffered shortages.
|
|
poverty
suffering
thrift
frugality
|
José Saramago |
b1e25fc
|
She had spears of straw and grass in her hair, not like Ophelia gone mad through contact with Hamlet's madness, but because she had slept in some stable loft.
|
|
poverty
|
Victor Hugo |
ae91c9f
|
Some secret of nurture withered a generation or two before I arrived, if it had ever existed before among the poor, marginalized people on the edges of Europe from whom I descend. Both my parents grew up with a deep sense of poverty that was mostly emotional but that they imagined as material long after they clambered into the middle class, and so they were more like a pair of rivalrous older siblings than parents who see their children as extensions of themselves and their hopes. They were stuck in separateness. I didn't realize anything was odd until I was already on my own and found out that not everyone's parents cut them off financially as soon as the law allowed. I tried to leave home unsuccessfully at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and did so successfully at seventeen, heading off to another country, as far away as I could go, and once I got there I realized I was more on my own than I had anticipated: I was henceforth entirely repsonsible for myself and thus began a few years of poverty.
|
|
family-relationships
poverty
family
coming-of-age
parents
|
Rebecca Solnit |
49ccfb8
|
External explanations of black-white differences -- discrimination or poverty, for example--seem to many to be more amenable to public policy than internal explanations such as culture. Those with this point of view tend to resist cultural explanations but there is yet another reason why some resist understanding the counterproductive effects of an anachronistic culture: Alternative explanations of economic and social lags provide a more satisfying ability to blame all such lags on the sins of others, such as racism or discrimination. Equally important, such external explanations require no painful internal changes in the black population but leave all changes to whites, who are seen as needing to be harangued, threatened, or otherwise forced to change. In short, prevailing explanations provide an alibi for those who lag--and an alibi is for many an enormously valuable asset that they are unlikely to give up easily.
|
|
racism
poverty
|
Thomas Sowell |
f4e3541
|
What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country will come to its senses?
|
|
prejudice
poverty
|
W.E.B. Du Bois |
daa2436
|
Sometimes when you had nothing at all and it was raining and you were alone in the flat, it was wonderful to know that you could have something even though it was only a cup of black and bitter coffee.
|
|
poverty
coffee-quotes
|
Betty Smith |
4af0a06
|
Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learning of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of careless happy childhood and dreaming youth.
|
|
poverty
|
W.E.B. Du Bois |
9b9c4cf
|
How can we embrace poverty as a way to God when everyone around us wants to become rich? Poverty has many forms. We have to ask ourselves: 'What is my poverty?' Is it lack of money, lack of emotional stability, lack of a loving partner, lack of security, lack of safety, lack of self-confidence? Each human being has a place of poverty. That's the place where God wants to dwell! 'How blessed are the poor,' Jesus says (Matthew 5:3). This means that our blessing is hidden in our poverty. We are so inclined to cover up our poverty and ignore it that we often miss the opportunity to discover God, who dwells in it. Let's dare to see our poverty as the land where our treasure is hidden.
|
|
poverty
god
poor-in-spirit
|
Henri J.M. Nouwen |
65c2ace
|
"In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with the Blair/Orwell distinction) congratulates them on their forceful use of tautology: This is rather extraordinary. Orwell did indeed meet Garrett in Liverpool in 1936, and was highly impressed to find that he knew him already through his pseudonymous writing--under the name Matt Lowe--for John Middleton Murry's Adelphi. As he told his diary:
|
|
poverty
writing
politics
tautology
edward-said
george-orwell
economics
|
Christopher Hitchens |
99c5144
|
The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help.
|
|
poverty
poor-people
|
Markus Zusak |
039bf8e
|
To smash something is the ghetto's chronic need. Most of the time it is the members of the ghetto who smash each other, and themselves. But as long as the ghetto walls are standing there will always come a moment when these outlets do not work.
|
|
rebellion
poverty
ghettos
uprisings
riots
blacks
anger
destruction
|
James Baldwin |
9cd5d8f
|
Whatever we poor men may not have, we have free speech, and no one can take it from us.
|
|
poverty
freedom
|
Howard Zinn |
51a7a98
|
the ignobility of thought and action that desperation born of indigence produces.
|
|
poverty
|
Iain M. Banks |
0815b4a
|
At least ten times as many people died from preventable, poverty-related diseases on September 11, 2011, as died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that black day. The terrorist attacks led to trillions of dollars being spent on the 'war on terrorism' and on security measures that have inconvenienced every air traveller since then. The deaths caused by poverty were ignored. So whereas very few people have died from terrorism since September 11, 2001, approximately 30,000 people died from poverty-related causes on September 12, 2001, and on every day between then and now, and will die tomorrow. Even when we consider larger events like the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed approximately 230,000 people, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed up to 200,000, we are still talking about numbers that represent just one week's toll for preventable, poverty-related deaths -- and that happens fifty-two weeks in every year.
|
|
poverty
extreme-poverty
war-on-terror
|
Peter Singer |
1ff1078
|
Money isn't everything.''The only people who say that are people who have enough money to pay the rent.
|
|
poverty
|
Janet Evanovich |
c966068
|
Stressful conditions from outside school are much more likely to intrude into the classroom in high poverty schools. Every one of ten stressors is two to three times more common in high poverty schools-- Student hunger, unstable housing, lack of medical and dental care, caring for family members, immigration issues, community violence and safety issues.
|
|
poverty
classroom
|
Robert D. Putnam |
1a6b8e9
|
Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows. What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy? Do they even know I'm HERE?
|
|
poverty
|
Ray Bradbury |
99351dc
|
There is no sadder symbol of the crippling poverty in which millions of peasants were forced to live than the image of a peasant and his son struggling to drag a plough through the mud.
|
|
poverty
ploughing
russia
|
Orlando Figes |
56314e6
|
"Then he said the funny thing was the old man himself had left home when he was a kid, after a fight with his own father. The father lit into him for using the wheelbarrow. "It was this way. They always carried the feed to the horses, pail by pail. In the winter, when the horses were in the stalls. So my father took the notion to carry it to them in the wheelbarrow. Naturally it was a lot quicker. But he got beat. For laziness. That was the way they were, you know. Any change of any kind was a bad thing. Efficiency was just laziness, to them. That's the peasant thinking for you."
|
|
poverty
parochialism
conservatism
|
Alice Munro |
35a6732
|
"I hate what G.P. calls the New People, the new class people with their cars and their money and their tellies and their stupid vulgarities and their stupid crawling imitations of the bourgeoisie.
|
|
money
poverty
soul
|
John Fowles |
4c8441a
|
Greeting cards routinely tell us that everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all of the time.
|
|
poverty
love
water
|
Zadie Smith |
3f9c76d
|
"At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lowered wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, etc. And when he knows trade is bad, and could understand (at least partially) that there are not buyers enough in the market to purchase the goods already made, and consequently that there is no demand for more; when he would bear and endure much without complaining, could he also see that his employers were bearing their share; he is, I say, bewildered and (to use his own word) "aggravated" to see that all goes on just as usual with the millowners. Large houses are still occupied, while spinners' and weavers' cottages stand empty, because the families that once filled them are obliged to live in rooms or cellars. Carriages still roll along the streets, concerts are still crowded by subscribers, the shops for expensive luxuries still find daily customers, while the workman loiters away his unemployed time in watching these things, and thinking of the pale, uncomplaining wife at home, and the wailing children asking in vain for enough of food--of the sinking health, of the dying life of those near and dear to him. The contrast is too great. Why should he alone suffer from bad times?"
|
|
poverty
class
classics
class-struggle
housing
housing-crisis
manchester
mary-barton
|
Elizabeth Gaskell |
f659fd5
|
I start to think, 'It's awful being too poor to even buy my own dress for homecoming.' But that's instantly swept away by another thought: 'I'm so lucky that someone cates enough to loan me a dress.
|
|
poverty
pessimist
viewpoint
perspective
optimist
|
Margaret Peterson Haddix |
54777e9
|
A woman walks by the gate, leading a little boy with a balloon of hunger in his belly and hair bleached by malnutrition.
|
|
poverty
|
Mohsin Hamid |
f0e37bc
|
Because he has money he's a kind of god. Because I have none I'm a kind of worm. A worm because I've failed and I have no money. A worm because I'm not even sure if I hate you.
|
|
poverty
|
Jean Rhys |
f8e9e00
|
First premise: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it. Second premise: Extreme poverty is bad. Third premise: There is some extreme poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance. Conclusion: We ought to prevent some extreme poverty.
|
|
poverty
utilitarianism
|
Peter Singer |
5e39038
|
The family trees of the poor don't grow to any height.
|
|
poverty
family-trees
poor
|
Roddy Doyle |
7ceda43
|
"But apparently you don't need dot-com wealth to ruin an area for its low-income residents. The Pioneer Press quotes Secretary of HUD Andrew Cuomo ruing the "cruel irony" that prosperity is shrinking the stock of affordable housing nationwide: "The stronger the economy, the stronger the upward pressure on rents."
|
|
poverty
gentrification
nickel-and-dimed
rent
|
Barbara Ehrenreich |
ee5d563
|
As one 1935 study put it, boys and girls who were 15 or 16 in 1929 when the Depression began are no longer children; they are grown-ups - adults who had never, since they left school, had anything productive to do; adults in the embittered by years of suffering and hardship. The President's Advisory Commission on Education was to warn of a whole lost generation of young people.
|
|
poverty
opportunity
education
|
Robert A. Caro |
068ac97
|
The print was an old one made from a negative taken in the 1960's of her parents in Sydney Mines, dancing with thrilled, excited expressions on their faces, in front of a classic car that had been a wedding gift at the time. Her mother's hair, red back then, was held back by a blue handkerchief, and she was dressed in a billowing skirt and white blouse. Her father's denim jeans and faded t-shirt were streaked with coal dust as he held her hands and spun her around in the front yard of their old clapboard house, yellow grass under their feet and a cobalt-blue sky with white clouds drifting above. Mandy could almost feel the late summer breeze as she gazed deeply into the print, watching the flamboyant colors come to life. She hung it up to dry on two wooden clothespins hanging from a string above her.
|
|
photography
poverty
arents
coal-mine
darkroom
kodachrome
print
retro
dancing
coal
canada
memory
nostalgia
|
Rebecca McNutt |
b061428
|
The men in Washington seem unable to accept that there are more poor people than rich peoplele in the world. They do not recognize that poor people, in the late twentieth century, cannot endure poverty and disease and ignorance forever. When minimal social justice is long denied, the poor will rebel. If rebellion can be crushed - as is perhaps possible in a very small country like El Salvador - it will rise again later. Nicaragua can be bombed flat, and then what? A success story like Vietnam? [1986].
|
|
rebellion
poverty
nicaragua
poor-people
rich-people
|
Martha Gellhorn |
cfe67f9
|
The three wealthiest people in the world own more than the GDP of forty-eight countries!
|
|
poverty
wealth
inequity
ethics
|
Alice Walker |
b6c5408
|
Nothing was simple, certainly not simplification.
|
|
poverty
simplification
order
simple
|
Colum McCann |
8fe8f3e
|
"Goruyorsun ya, ailede herkes genellikle iyi. Oyleyse neden kucuk Isa bize yakinlik gostermiyor? Dr. Faulhaber'in evine gidersin masanin bir suru seyler tepeleme dolu oldugunu gorursun. Villas-Boaslarda da oyle. Dr. Adaucto Luz'dan hic soz etmeyelim." Ilk kez, Totoca'nin aglamak uzere oldugunu gordum. "Bu nedenle, kucuk Isanin yalniz is olsun diye yoksul dogmak istedigini dusunuyorum. Sonra da, yalnizca zenginlerin zahmete degdigini gormustu... Neyse, birakalim bunlari. Belki soylediklerim cok gunah."
|
|
poverty
religion
fairness
sad
|
José Mauro de Vasconcelos |
c55d34f
|
No doubt we instinctively prefer to help those who are close to us. Few could stand by and watch a child drown; many can ignore the avoidable deaths of children in Africa or India. The question, however, is not what we usually do, but what we ought to do, and it is difficult to see any sound moral justification for the view that distance, or community membership, makes a crucial difference to our obligations.
|
|
poverty
utilitarianism
|
Peter Singer |
d5002e1
|
We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree; We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty.
|
|
poverty
liberty
|
Howard Zinn |
5a28873
|
"One of the conditions of citizenship is not to think too much about money, and the only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it." "You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense; but your lungs are thinking about the air, if you are not. And so it is with your rich people--they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp!"
|
|
poverty
it-s-expensive-to-be-poor
|
Edith Wharton |
53f612c
|
<> continuo Jack, dopo aver tolto il coperchio. <> <> <>
|
|
poverty
brest
peas
sea-life
|
Patrick O'Brian |
2a3ca37
|
Can the law get blood out of a stone? I haven't any money.
|
|
poverty
law-enforcement
law
|
W. Somerset Maugham |
cfd666e
|
It was the ghetto. I had seen them before from the high altitude of one who could look down and pity. Now I belonged here and the view was different. A first glance told it all. Here it was pennies and clutter and spittle on the curb... Here was the indefinable stink of despair. Here modesty was the luxury. People struggled for it... Here sensuality was escape, proof of manhood for people who could prove it no other way... Here hips drew the eye and flirted with the eye and caused the eye to lust or laugh. It was better to look at hips than at the ghetto.
|
|
poverty
sadness
despair
|
John Howard Griffin |
b0536e3
|
...[A] lot of them, without even understanding the cause, just give up. They take what they can-mostly in pleasure,and they make the grand gesture, the wild gesture, because what have they got to lose if they do die in a car wreck or a knife fight or something else equally stupid.
|
|
poverty
gangs
|
John Howard Griffin |
f59a60d
|
We, who were reduced to eating on the sidewalk , were suddenly elevated in status by this man's misery. We were the aristocrats and he the beggar. It flattered us. We were superbly above him and the comedy gave us a delusion of high self-respect. In a while, the magnanimity of the rich would complete the picture. We would feed our scraps to the poor.
|
|
poverty
wealth
social-classes
|
John Howard Griffin |
86ec119
|
"Guzel bir kose var. Yiyecek bir seyler gotururuz. En cok ne istersin?" "Seni, Portuga." "Ben salamdan, yumurtadan, muzdan soz ediyorum..." "Her seyi severim. Evde yiyecek bir sey bulundugumuz zaman sevmeyi ogrendik."
|
|
poverty
love
thankful
|
José Mauro de Vasconcelos |
20fa331
|
Bazilari icin olmek kolaydi. Ugursuz bir trenin gelmesi yetiyordu, tamamdi bu is. Ama benim icin goklere ucmak ne kadar guctu. Herkes engel olmak icin bacaklarimi tutuyordu.
|
|
poverty
death
love
|
José Mauro de Vasconcelos |
c3d48ae
|
"It is amazing that the refugees stay sane. First the bombs, perhaps the "battle" around them, their casualties, their naked helplessness; then the flight, leaving behind everything they have worked for all their lives; then the semi-starvation and ugly hardship of the camps or the slums; and as a final cruelty, the killing diseases which only strike at them."
|
|
war
poverty
vietnam
refugees
|
Martha Gellhorn |
f0cde7a
|
I understand,' said Melanie. An ancient, female look passed between them; they were poor women pensioners, planets round a male sun.
|
|
poverty
powerlessness
patriarchy
|
Angela Carter |