Poverty Quotations

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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

Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort

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Society comprises two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food.

- Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort

Charles Darwin

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If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

- Charles Darwin

Heinrich Heine

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Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood.

- Heinrich Heine

William James

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The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.

- William James

We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

- William James

Eli Khamarov

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Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit.

- Eli Khamarov

P.J. O'Rourke

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You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

- P.J. O'Rourke

Norman Vincent Peale

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Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.