#poverty

People.. were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base. ↗

— Muhammad Yunus

#economics #hard-work #poverty #poverty

You can't eat straight A's. ↗

— Maxine Hong Kingston

#poverty #school #poverty

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#cring #fables #greed #poverty #sorrow

It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country. ↗

— Paul Farmer

#poverty #rights #science #science

Real poverty is when hunger pangs force from my mind all thoughts but those of food. Real poverty is when the children are not dressed warmly enough for winter. Real poverty is when the housing we can afford is not adequate to the needs of our families. On the other hand, real poverty is - equally - when I have eaten so much that I am uncomfortable, and again, my thoughts center on food. Or when I have so many clothes that I have to spend a lot of mental energy making choices among them or finding ways to store them. Or when, regardless of my living conditions, I am discontent and brooding about how to have more. Real poverty is when material things are uppermost and pressing - whether because we have too few or too many of them. It is poverty, because the human mind and spirit are made for higher things, worthier pursuits. ↗

— Maxine Hancock

#poverty #prosperity #wealth #equality

And every historic effort to forge a democratic project has been undermined by two fundamental realities: poverty and paranoia. The persistence of poverty generates levels of despair that deepen social conflict the escalation of paranoia produces levels of distrust that reinforce cultural division. Rae is the most explosive issue in American life precisely because it forces us to confront the tragic facts of poverty and paranoia despair, and distrust. In short, a candid examination of race matters takes us to the core of the crisis of American democracy (p. 107). ↗

— Cornel West

#democracy #poverty #race #life

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. ↗

— Hélder Câmara

#christianity #communism #compassion #food #hunger

Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food. ↗

— Criss Jami

#considerate #consideration #environment #experience #famine

By defining the problem as "hunger," the emergency food system is helping to direct our attention away from the more fundamental problem of poverty, and the even more basic problem of inequality. ↗

— Janet Poppendieck

#hunger #inequality #poverty #food

In war," answered the weaver, "the strong make slaves of the weak, and in peace the rich make slaves of the poor. We must work to live, and they give us such mean wages that we die. We toil for them all day long, and they heap up gold in their coffers, and our children fade away before their time, and the faces of those we love become hard and evil. We tread out the grapes, another drinks the wine. We sow the corn, and our own board is empty. We have chains, though no eye beholds them; and are slaves, though men call us free. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#love