#poverty

My father was a Presbyterian minister, working among the poor in West Virginia. He had taken what amounted to a vow of poverty when he accepted that call and so we never had much money. ↗

— James Green Somerville

#among #amounted #call #father #had

Poverty may be the mother of crime, but lack of good sense is the father. ↗

— Jean de la Bruyere

#father #good #good sense #lack #may

Loneliness is the ultimate poverty. ↗

— Abigail Van Buren

#poverty #ultimate

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable. ↗

— William Samuel Johnson

#comfort #condition #every #hope #insupportable

I came from a very poor family and my main dream in life was to break out of this poverty. ↗

— Viktor Yanukovych

#came #dream #family #i #i came

Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? ↗

— George Orwell

#communism #equality #marxism #orwell #poverty

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. ↗

— Mother Teresa

#love #medicine #poverty #spirituality #uncaring

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. ↗

— Wallace Stegner

#motivation #poverty #writing #inspirational

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. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#activism #evil #poverty #life

My honey child, them housing projects Cannot contain her multitudes A sunbeam, hard upon her Just a fly strugglin’ through her braid loops Watch me prove to ‘em I’m more than nothin’ But a ragamuffin with homesick eyes Yes, when it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me My love, she is a drummer Than industrial steel, her backbone tougher The eloping night and the honey moon that trails Just dirt ‘neath her finger nails I’ll be down on them crossroads ‘Til daybreak winks a bright eye And if it gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me She’s heard all the right things And they did not persuade her She has no use for your words What she wants is your labor ‘Cause when gringos speak of minorities They tend to keep their voices low Ah, but when that gets to be the same old thing Shorty you ought to come and see about me ↗

— Valentine Xavier

#bravado #love #poverty #station #valentine-xavier-bronzeville