#poverty

There is no Them. There are only facets of Us. ↗

— John Green

#poverty #them #us #man

American humorist Kin Hubbard said , "It ain't no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be". The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: "If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?" Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue... Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#poverty #love

The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger. ↗

— Fidel Castro

#ignorance #illness #oppression #poverty #war

I thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby and beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to see how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was softened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known, excepting to themselves and God. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#poverty #unity #unity

I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor...I truly believe that when the rich meet the poor, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end. ↗

— Shane Claiborne

#church #poverty #christian-living

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible. ↗

— Isaiah Berlin

#cured #evils #fighting #goals #ignorance

Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse. ↗

— Bertolt Brecht

#makes #poverty #wise #you

Let me first say that I don't think the millennium target of cutting global poverty in half is an impossible or abstract target. I think it is a real and achievable goal. ↗

— Gro Harlem Brundtland

#cutting #first #global #goal #half

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity. ↗

— Coco Chanel

#opposite #people #poverty #some #some people

Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I've been poor when I was in China... As kids we never had to starve, but just didn't have enough meat, enough rice. ↗

— Joan Chen

#china #could #enough #had #hunger