The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
George Orwell2 quotes
It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs—and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety. — George Orwell · 1933Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry. — George Orwell · 1933James Baldwin2 quotes
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. — James Baldwin · 1961Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor. — James Baldwin · 1960Beatrice Kaufman1 quote
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is better. — Beatrice Kaufman · 1937Benjamin Franklin1 quote
I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1766Charles Dickens1 quote
Please, sir, I want some more. — Charles Dickens · 1837E.M. Forster1 quote
To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. — E.M. Forster · 1910Frank McKinney Hubbard1 quote
It's no disgrace t'be poor, but it might as well be. — Frank McKinney Hubbard · 1911Franklin D. Roosevelt1 quote
Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1944George Bernard Shaw1 quote
The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty. — George Bernard Shaw · 1905Gerald Brenan1 quote
Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money. — Gerald Brenan · 1978J.K. Rowling1 quote
Poverty is a lot like childbirth-you know it is going to hurt before it happens, but you'll never know how much until you experience it. — J.K. Rowling · 2002Jane Addams1 quote
Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited. — Jane Addams · 1910Jesus1 quote
If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. — Jesus · 60Livy1 quote
The worst kind of shame is that caused by parsimony or poverty. — Livy · 9 BCLyndon B. Johnson1 quote
Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. — Lyndon B. Johnson · 1964Michael Harrington1 quote
The other America, the America of poverty, is hidden today in a way that it never was before. Its millions are socially invisible to the rest of us... The very development of American society is creating a new kind of blindness about poverty. The poor are increasingly slipping out of the very experience and consciousness of the nation. — Michael Harrington · 1962Nicholas Breton1 quote
I wish my deadly foe, no worse
Than want of friends, and empty purse. — Nicholas Breton · 1577Oscar Wilde1 quote
There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. — Oscar Wilde · 1891Samuel Johnson1 quote
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult. — Samuel Johnson · 1782Socrates1 quote
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent. — Socrates · 375 BCThomas Flatman1 quote
There's an experienced rebel, Time,
And in his squadrons Poverty;
There's Age that brings along with him
A terrible artillery:
And if against all these thou keep'st thy crown,
Th'usurper Death will make thee lay it down. — Thomas Flatman · 1682Tom Joad1 quote
Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. — Tom Joad · 1940Warren G. Harding1 quote
There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty. — Warren G. Harding · 1921William Graham Sumner1 quote
It would be hard to find a single instance of a direct assault by positive effort upon poverty, vice, and misery which has not either failed or, if it has not failed directly and entirely, has not entailed other evils greater than the one which it removed. — William Graham Sumner · 1881