Extreme Poverty Quotes

• The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

  Bono

  Ocean, Eye, Mean

  28 Copy quote

• Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.

  Jeffrey Sachs

  Political, Earth, Disease

  17 Copy quote

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

  James A. Baldwin

  Inspirational, Black, Poverty

  Nobody Knows My Name (1961) "Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a letter from Harlem"

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• The key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development. The ladder of development hovers overhead, and the poorest of the poor are stuck beneath it. They lack the minimum amount of capital necessary to get a foothold, and therefore need a boost up to the first rung.

  Jeffrey Sachs

  Feet, Keys, Needs

  Jeffrey Sachs (2011). “The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Lifetime”, p.388, Penguin UK

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• Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.

  Kofi Annan

  Poverty, Prowess, Threat

  "What’s Poverty Got to Do With It?" by Freeman Osonuga, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 22, 2013.

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• 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

  Rainy Day, Advice, Enemy

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (letter to Boswell, 7 Dec. 1782)

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• 

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

  Coco Chanel

  Fashion, Courage, Thinking

  102 Copy quote

• Of course I am frustrated with regard to extreme poverty, to violence that never seems to cease.

  Roger Moore

  Frustrated, Poverty, Violence

  7 Copy quote

• By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.

  Brad Pitt

  Time, Poverty, Evening

  "Hyde Park centre stage of greatest show on earth" by Vanessa Thorpe and Jamie Doward, www.theguardian.com. July 2, 2005.

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• Anywhere you have extreme poverty and no national health insurance, no promise of health care regardless of social standing, that's where you see the sharp limitations of market-based health care.

  Paul Farmer

  Promise, Care, Poverty

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• ...let us recognize that extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere. Let us recall that poverty is a denial of human rights. For the first time in history, in this age of unprecedented wealth and technical prowess, we have the power to save humanity from this shameful scourge. Let us summon the will to do it.

  Kofi Annan

  Time, Rights, Humanity

  13 Copy quote

• That made me feel good, not to go to a resort where outside the door is extreme poverty

  Jasmine Guy

  Doors, Feel Good, Poverty

  7 Copy quote

• At the most basic level, the key to ending extreme poverty is to enable the poorest of the poor to get their foot on the ladder of development.

  Jeffrey Sachs

  Feet, Keys, Ladders

  24 Copy quote

• Every morning our newspapers could read, 'More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.' How? The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack antimalarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, sad stories rarely get written.

  Jeffrey Sachs

  Morning, Drinking, Yesterday

  19 Copy quote

• I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.

  Groucho Marx

  Funny, Life, Work

  16 Copy quote

• EJECTION, n. An approved remedy for the disease of garrulity. It is also much used in cases of extreme poverty.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Disease, Poverty, Approval

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.53, 谷月社

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• Witnessing the extreme poverty in remote parts of Affrica can make you feel sad and powerless until you realize how little it takes to change these people's lives fundamentally in sustainable ways.

  John Legend

  People, Littles, Way

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• It is a tragic mix-up when the United States spends 500,000 for every enemy soldier killed, and only 53 annually on the victims of poverty.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  War, Soldier, Enemy

  27 Copy quote

• It's easy to sit in relative luxury and peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third World debts.

  Roger Moore

  Luxury, Debt, World

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• Extreme poverty threatens people's right to life itself and makes impossible the enjoyment of the rights and freedoms essential to a humane way of life.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Humane Way, Rights, People

  6 Copy quote

• The essence of Africa's crisis is fundamentally its extreme poverty and therefore its inability to mobilize out of its own resources even the barest of minimum resources to address any of the public health crises that Africa faces.

  Jeffrey Sachs

  Health, Essence, Addresses

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• Of course I am frustrated with regard to extreme poverty, to violence that never seems to cease. Greed is the key. It's easy to sit in relative luxury and peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third World debts. Not many of us are willing to give up everything we have. We can however give some, and millions of people do, governments do, but there is so much more to be done.

  Roger Moore

  Giving Up, Keys, Government

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• There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil.

  Plato

  Evil, Citizens, Poverty

  Plato (2008). “Laws”, p.112, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Tomorrow is Now... If we act, 2015 can be a year for the history books. It can be the year that we put the world on the path to end extreme poverty; the year we place sustainability at the heart of our future; and the year that we agree that every person should be able to lead a life of dignity and opportunity.

  Kathy Calvin

  Book, Heart, Opportunity

  47 Copy quote

• The Millennium Declaration was a solemn pledge to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty.

  Kevin Watkins

  Children, Men, Fellow Man

  4 Copy quote