#poverty

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? ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#colonialism #imperialism #inequality #poverty #race

For Ragamuffins, God's name is Mercy. We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God. Without mercy our darkness would plunge us into despair - for some, self-destruction. Time alone with God reveals the unfathomable depths of the poverty of the spirit. We are so poor that even our poverty is not our own: It belongs to the mysterium tremendum of a loving God. ↗

— Brennan Manning

#mercy #poverty #prayer #ragamuffin #spirit

Childhood, after all, is the first precious coin that poverty steals from a child. ↗

— Anthony Horowitz

#loss-of-innocence #poverty #sherlock-holmes

You can find Calcutta anywhere in the world. You only need two eyes to see. Everywhere in the world there are people that are not loved, people that are not wanted nor desired, people that no one will help, people that are pushed away or forgotten. And this is the greatest poverty. ↗

— Mother Teresa

#service #love

Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#charity #micro-credit #poor #poverty #social-business

(So I heard the boom of my fathr's rifle when he shot my best friend.) A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.(14) ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#death #friendship #poor #poverty #death

This is the basis for the most important critique of microfinance. The poor are not entrepreneurs. The idea that more than a few will turn tiny loans into a viable business is simply unrealistic. ↗

— Ian Smillie

#economics #ian-smillie #microfinance #poor #poverty

To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#microfinance #poverty #social-business #society #business

If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#poverty #poverty-alleviation #social-change #change

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. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#class-warfare #politics #poverty #change