Famous Quotes about Poverty and The Poor (127 Quotations)

He who knows how to be poor knows everything.

Here we all live in a state of ambitious poverty.

I am a poor man, but I have this consolation: I am poor by accident, not by design.

I am my brother's keeper, and he's sleeping pretty rough these days.

I believe the war on poverty is a more American idea than the war on the war on poverty. I believe that most people feel like that. And I believe that it ain't over till it's over.

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]

I know a fellow who's as broke as the Ten Commandments.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged.) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.

I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he cannot have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.

I wasn't born in a log cabin, but my family moved into one as soon as they could afford it.

I worked myself up from nothing to extreme poverty.

I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.

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

In a country well governed poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed wealth is something to be ashamed of.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

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

In verity we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?