#overt

It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy. ↗

— Thornton Wilder

#insensitivity #poverty #education

[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all. ↗

— Michael Palin

#competition #democracy #equality #poor #poverty

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread. ↗

— Anatole France

#poverty #wealth #equality

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. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#heresy #leprosy #poverty #faith

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world. ↗

— Paulo Freire

#poverty #revolution #life

I know I grew up in the time when a young man in a baggy suit and slicked-down hair stood spraddle-legged in the crossroads of history and talked hot and mean about the colored, giving my poor and desperate people a reason to feel superior to somebody, to anybody. I know that even as the words of George Wallace rang through my Alabama, the black family who lived down the dirt road from our house sent fresh-picked corn and other food to the poor white lady and her three sons, because they knew their daddy had run off, because hungry does not have a color. ↗

— Rick Bragg

#george-wallace #hunger #poverty #family

Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work. ↗

— George Orwell

#freedom #george-orwell #money #poverty #freedom

Because introverts are typically good listeners and, at least, have the appearance of calmness, we are attractive to emotionally needy people. Introverts, gratified that other people are initiating with them, can easily get caught in these exhausting and unsatisfying relationships. ↗

— Adam S. McHugh

#introverts #neediness #relationships #friendship

Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness. ↗

— Criss Jami

#companion #companionship #different #extroversion #fear

En el aspecto social, la inclusión es el principio básico. Nuestro lema son los pobres primero y para los pobres los mejores instrumentos, los mejores maestros, las mejores infraestructuras. La cultura para los pobres no puede ser una pobre cultura. Debe ser grande, ambiciosa, refinada, avanzada, nada de sobras. Además, ellos multiplican su efecto, porque son enormemente agradecidos ante el esfuerzo. No es práctico incorporar a su vida esa faceta como si fuera un florero. ↗

— José Antonio Abreu

#inspirational #national-system-of-orchestra #orchestra #poverty #venezuela