World Poverty Quotes

• 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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• Live simply so that others may simply live.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Spiritual, Simple, Diversity

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• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Children, Military

  Speech in Washington, 16 Apr. 1953, in Public Papers of Presidents 1953 (1960) p. 182

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• It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

  Bill Vaughan

  Nice, Poor Nations, Would Be

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• We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

  Mother Teresa

  Motivational, Wise, Peace

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• The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

  John F. Kennedy

  Science, Technology, Men

  Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1961

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• Poverty is the worst form of violence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Peace, Hunger And Poverty

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• The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.

  John Berger

  Priorities, Scarcity, World

  John Berger (2011). “Keeping a Rendezvous”, p.234, Vintage

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• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Military, War

  Speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C., 16 Apr. 1953

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• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

  Frederick Douglass

  Peace, Patriotic, Ignorance

  Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of emancipation in the District of Columbia,Washington, D.C., Apr. 1886

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• In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

  Confucius

  Country, Countries Of The World, Government

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• Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.

  Nelson Mandela

  Hunger And Poverty, Hunger Poverty, Justice

  Twitter post from Jan 21, 2016

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• The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Money, Economic Inequality, History

  Second Inaugural Address, 20 Jan. 1937

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• 

  An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

  Plutarch

  Freedom, Tyrants, Economic Inequality

  "When Inequality Isn't" by John Mauldin, www.forbes.com. March 29, 2014.

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• There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Witty, Humorous, Food

  82 Copy quote

• Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

  Aristotle

  Inspiration, Parent, Politics

  Aristotle, Stephen Everson (1996). “Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens”, p.41, Cambridge University Press

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• Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone's head.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Civilization, Poverty, Danger

  George Bernard Shaw (2012). “Major Barbara”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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• Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is expended so obscenely on defense budgets would make the difference in enabling God's children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives.

  Desmond Tutu

  Children, Real, Educational

  Desmond Tutu's Nobel Lecture in Oslo, Norway, www.nobelprize.org. December 11, 1984.

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

  George Bernard Shaw

  Evil, Poverty, Crime

  Major Barbara (1907) preface

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• Wars are bred by poverty and oppression. Continued peace is possible only in a relatively free and prosperous world.

  George C. Marshall

  War, World, Poverty

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• Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Military, War, Clouds

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• Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.

  George Soros

  Government, Democracy, Investing

  "Philanthropist Under Fire". BuzzFlash Interview, www.alternet.org. March 1, 2004.

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• Let us work in partnerships between rich and poor to improve the opportunities of all human beings to build better lives.

  Kofi Annan

  Opportunity, Rich Poor, Poverty

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• This is not about charity, it's about justice... The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty - I didn't say that, Colin Powell said that . . .

  Edward de Bono

  War, Inspiration, Justice

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• Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign

  Frederik Willem de Klerk

  Racism, Doe, Reign

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