Quotes · Skopia

27 quotes

Oliver Twist · 1837

★ 8.1

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

Sociology · 1881

★ 4.3

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

Socrates

Plato, Republic · 375 BC

★ 4.0

Scripture · Religious literature

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

Matthew 19:21 · 60

★ 3.8

Autobiography and memoir

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

Down and Out in Paris and London · 1933

★ 3.7

Film · Drama (film) · Drama

Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there.

Tom Joad

The Grapes of Wrath · 1940

★ 3.7

Essay · Magazine

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

James Baldwin

1960

★ 3.7

Essay · Magazine

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

1961

★ 3.7

Scripture · Religious literature

Give me neither poverty nor riches.

Proverbs 30:8

686 BC

★ 3.6

Newspaper

I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is better.

Beatrice Kaufman

1937

★ 3.6

Speech · Political speech

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

1964 State of the Union · 1964

★ 3.6

Historical literature

The worst kind of shame is that caused by parsimony or poverty.

Livy

Ab Urbe Condita · 9 BC

★ 2.2

Essay · Political literature

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

1766

★ 2.1

Autobiography and memoir

Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

George Orwell

Down and Out in Paris and London · 1933

★ 2.1

Speech · Political speech

Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1944

★ 2.1

Newspaper

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

2002

★ 2.1

Poem

I wish my deadly foe, no worse Than want of friends, and empty purse.

Nicholas Breton

1577

★ 1.9

Letter

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

1782

★ 1.9

Novel

To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.

E.M. Forster

Howards End · 1910

★ 1.9

Sociology

Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited.

Jane Addams

1910

★ 1.9

Essay

It's no disgrace t'be poor, but it might as well be.

Frank McKinney Hubbard

1911

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

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

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.9

Poem

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

1682

★ 1.8

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

1978

★ 1.8

Sociology

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

The Other America · 1962

★ 1.7

Essay · Magazine · Political literature

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

Fortnightly Review · 1891

★ 1.2

Play · Drama (play)

The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.

George Bernard Shaw

1905

★ 1.1

Sourced and curated.