Make Poverty History Quotes

I've often said that far more sensible than a 'make poverty history' campaign would be a 'make wealth history' campaign. It is, after all, the wealthy people who do all the damage. The less money you earn, the fewer resources you use up. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

Diamonds are a key component in the campaign to make poverty history. ~ Nicky Oppenheimer

The only way to end poverty, to make it history, is to build viable systems on the ground that deliver critical and affordable goods and services to the poor, in ways that are financially sustainable and scaleable. If we do that, we really can make poverty history. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

People in that crowd want to make poverty history, but NOT if they have to pay for it themselves ~ Ben Elton

Poverty does not always prevent a rich person from dating someone who is poor, unless the man is the one who is poor. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

If we are to make poverty history, we must have the active participation of States, civil society and the private sector, as well as individual volunteers. ~ Kofi Annan

In twenty years' time - in other words, when you're thirty-seven years old - you will have understood at last that all the evil in the world - I mean the poverty and ignorance of the poor and the cunning and lavishness of the rich - and all the vulgarity in the world, and all the violence, and all the brutality - I mean all the things that make you feel guilty and think of suicide - by the time you're thirty-seven you'll know that all these things are the result of everyone's thinking alike, Ka said. ~ Orhan Pamuk

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

I hear, 'But why do poor people make such bad decisions?' But actually, their decision-making can be far more complex than that of the better-off in many ways. They're not financially illiterate: they're constantly weighing up choices based on the reality of poverty. Somehow the international development community has resisted accepting this. ~ Ann Cotton

America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocratic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true. Yet now ... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Every morning, when people are getting up in the tent, the babies are crying, people are pushing each other at the taps outside and some children are already pulling the crusts of porridge off the pots we ate from last night, my first-born brother and I clean our shoes. Our grandmother makes us sit on our mats with our legs straight out so she can look carefully at our shoes to make sure we have done it properly. No other children in the tent have real school shoes. When we three look at them it's as if we are in a real house again, with no war, no away. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Only don't go to the other extreme and delve like slaves. Have regular hours for work and play, make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty. ~ Louisa May Alcott

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization. ~ Paul Farmer

I am so proud to be from New Orleans and to be one of those people who had been displaced. I wasn't there during that time, but that's where I come from, that kind of poverty, and I'm very, very proud of that because it's given me my history. ~ Tyler Perry

When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell. ~ Walter Bagehot

The job of the politician is to speak for all people; not just for parties with vested interests, or organisations with the biggest wallets. The first people a politician should protect are those that cannot protect themselves: Those weakest and most vulnerable among us. This is, to most of us, something that seems to be an obvious statement of fact, and that may be so, but it's also a forgotten fact. Now, today, the opposite is true. It should shame us all. It shames me. The very fact that the most poor and the most vulnerable in our society are those that are victimised and stamped upon, whereas the most wealthy and the most influential are making more profits and acquiring more assets and wealth than ever before in history, is a damning indictment of what our society has become ~ Paul Howsley

So they had all had more troubles than she. Did that really make them superior? If two men were walking along the street and a brick fell on one, missing the other, did that make the injured one a better person? ~ Elizabeth Harrower

The sign over supermarket express checkout lanes, TEN ITEMS OR LESS, is a grammatical error, they say, and as a result of their carping whole-food and other upscale supermarkets have replaced the signs with TEN ITEMS OR FEWER. The director of the Bicycle Transportation Alliance has apologized for his organization's popular T-shirt that reads ONE LESS CAR, conceding that it should read ONE FEWER CAR. By this logic, liquor stores should refuse to sell beer to customers who are fewer than twenty-one years old, law-abiding motorists should drive at fewer than seventy miles an hour, and the poverty line should be defined by those who make fewer than eleven thousand five hundred dollars a year. And once you master this distinction, well, that's one fewer thing for you to worry about.45 ~ Steven Pinker

History proves beyond any possibility of doubt that no religion has ever given a stimulus to scientific progress comparable to that of Islam. The encouragement which learning and scientific research received from Islamic theology resulted in the splendid cultural achievements in the days of the Umayyads and Abbasids and the Arab rule in Sicily and Spain. I do not mention this in order that we might boast of those glorious memories at a time when the Islamic world has forsaken its own traditions and reverted to spiritual blindness and intellectual poverty. We have no right, in our present misery, to boast of past glories. But we must realize that it was the negligence of the Muslims and not any deficiency in the teachings of Islam that caused our present decay.

Islam has never been a barrier to progress and science. It appreciates the intellectual activities of man to such a degree as to place him above the angels. No other religion ever went so far in asserting the dominance of reason and, consequently, of learning, above all other manifestations of human life. ~ Muhammad Asad

When times are not so prosperous, we think at least our successful career will save us and our families from failure and despair. We are attracted, against our skepticism, to the idea that poverty will be alleviated by the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table ... Some of us often feel, and most of us sometimes feel, that we are only someone if we have made it: can look down on those who have not. The American dream is often a very private dream of being a star, the uniquely successful and admirable one, the one who stands out from the crowd of ordinary folk, who don't know how. And since we have believed in that dream for a long time and worked very hard to make it come true, it is hard for us to give it up, even though it contradicts another dream that we have - that of living in a society that would really be worth living in.3 ~ Chris Hedges

How striking is its actuality today! Everywhere sin is increasing to an appalling degree. The pride of man leads him to discard his God and attempt to make a paradise of earth. He has so far succeeded only in making it a vestibule of Hell, where impiety, immorality, and the worst passions have free scope; wars rage that are more terrible than any yet heard of, the majority of mankind suffers poverty and slavery, and all without the comfort which faith alone can impart. ~ Josefa Menendez

If our economies are to flourish, if global poverty is to be banished, and if the wellbeing of the world's people enhanced - not just in this generation but in succeeding generations - we must make sure we take care of the natural environment and resources on which our economic activity depends. ~ Gordon Brown

Poverty, Poetry, and new Titles of Honor, make Men ridiculous ~ Benjamin Franklin

...poor countries are poor because those who have power make choices that create poverty. They get it wrong not by mistake or ignorance but on purpose. To understand this, you have to go beyond economics and expert advice on the best thing to do and, instead, study how decisions actually get made, who gets to make them, and why those people decide to do what they do. ~ Daron Acemoglu

Confronted with the unhappy facts of exclusion, we sometimes reassure ourselves by telling stories: the poor boys who made it, theblacks who became a "credit to their race," the women elected to high office, the handicapped who made "useful contributions" to our society ... Just as we believe in the self-sufficient family, we also believe that any child with enough grit and ability can escape poverty and make a rewarding life. But these stories and beliefs clearly reflect the exceptions. ~ Kenneth Keniston

This is where the factionless live. Because they failed to complete initiation into whatever faction they chose, they live in poverty, doing the work no one else wants to do. They are janitors and construction workers and garbage collectors; they make fabric and operate trains and drive buses. In return for their work they get food and clothing, but, as my mother says, not enough of either. ~ Veronica Roth

So you never really tried to solve the problem.
Oh, c'mon. Can you ever "solve" poverty? Can you ever "solve" crime? Can you ever "solve" disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That's not cynicism, that's maturity. You can't stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won't leak, or at least won't leak on the people who are gonna vote for you.
What does that mean?
C'mon ...
Seriously. What does that mean?
Fine, whatever, "Mister Smith goes to motherfuckin' Washington," it means that, in politics, you focus on the needs of your power base. Keep them happy, and they keep you in office. ~ Max Brooks

I made a decision that whether or not I was going to make under the national poverty level wasn't going to play a part in whether or not I was an actor. That's what I do. ~ Don Johnson

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. ~ Bertrand Russell

Wealth to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degredation to make no effort to overcome. ~ Thucydides

The best way to help the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their own poverty. ~ Benjamin Franklin

These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, "How can you design for people if you don't know history and psychology? You can't. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up." He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu.

But as a professor who was popular with his students - and who advocated general education - Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. In this climate, being liked by your students was a sign of shallowness; and interest in real-world problems was proof of intellectual poverty and a distressing indifference to theory. ~ Michael Crichton

I
lived through beautiful times, Busayna. It was a different age. Cairo
was like Europe. It was clean and smart and the people were well
mannered and respectable and everyone knew his place exactly. I was
different too. I had my station in life, my money, all my friends were of
a certain niveau, I had my special places where I would spend the
evening - the Automobile Club, the Club Muhammad Ali, the Gezira
Club. What times! Every night was filled with laughter and parties and
drinking and singing. There were lots of foreigners in Cairo. Most of
the people living downtown were foreigners, until Abd el Nasser threw
them out in 1956."
"Why did he throw them out?"
"He threw the Jews out first, then the rest of the foreigners got
scared and left. By the way, what's your opinion of Abd el Nasser?"
"I was born after he died. I don't know. Some people say he was a
hero and others say he was a criminal."
"Abd el Nasser was the worst ruler in the whole history of Egypt.
He ruined the country and brought us defeat and poverty. The damage
he did to the Egyptian character will take years to repair. Abd el Nasser
taught the Egyptians to be cowards, opportunists, and hypocrites."
"So why do people love him?"
"Who says people love him?"
"Lots of people that I know love him."
"Anyone who loves Abd el Nasser is either an ignoramus or did
well out of him. The Free Officers wer ~ Alaa Al Aswany

A single assembly will never be a steady guardian of the laws, if Machiavel is right, when he says, Men are never good but through necessity: on the contrary, when good and evil are left to their choice, they will not fail to throw every thing into disorder and confusion. Hunger and poverty may make men industrious, but laws only can make them good; for, if men were so of themselves, there would be no occasion for laws; but, as the case is far otherwise, they are absolutely necessary. ~ John Adams

Money comes to money, and poverty to poverty. Education comes to education, and ignorance to ignorance. Those once victimised by history are likely to be victimised yet again. And those whom history has privileged are more likely to be privileged again. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Only in love can I find you, my God. In love the gates of my soul spring open, allowing me to breathe a new air of freedom and forget my own petty self. In love my whole being streams forth out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion, which make me a prisoner of my own poverty emptiness. In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward you, wanting never more to return, but to lose themselves completely in you, since by your love you are the inmost center of my heart, closer to me than I am to myself. ~ Karl Rahner

In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before. ~ Mitt Romney

Our entire system, in an economic sense, is based on restriction. Scarcity and inefficiency are the movers of money; the more there is of any resource the less you can charge for it. The more problems there are, the more opportunities there are to make money.

This reality is a social disease, for people can actually gain off the misery of others and the destruction of the environment. Efficiency, abundance and sustainability are enemies of our economic structure, for they are inverse to the mechanics required to perpetuate consumption.

This is profoundly critical to understand, for once you put this together you begin to see that the one billion people currently starving on this planet, the endless slums of the poor and all the horrors of a culture due to poverty and pravity are not natural phenomenon due to some natural human order or lack of earthly resources. They are products of the creation, perpetuation and preservation of artificial scarcity and inefficiency. ~ Peter Joseph

You know, and the fact that Nina Simone had to start playing in clubs and sing because her parents had moved north to support her music education. You know, so she had to sing. She had to make a living 'cause she was supporting her family. So poverty and race put her in this place which, you know, created enormous success, but it's not what her psyche was all about. ~ Liz Garbus

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

It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless - he may be of worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value - a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of broken basin, or dirty rag. ~ George MacDonald

Minor segments of earlier history may have been rescued or 'retrieved' -- e.g. Greek 'democracy,' Aristotle, the Magna Carta, etc. -- but these remain subservient, if not instrumental, to the imperatives of the modern historical narrative and to the progress of 'Western civilization.' African and Asia, in most cases, continue to struggle in order to catch up, in the process not only forgoeing the privilege of drawing on their own traditions and historical experiences that shaped who they were and, partly, who they have become but also letting themselves be drawn into devastating wars, poverty, disease and the destruction of their natural environment. Modernity, whose hegemonic discourse is determined by the institutions and intellectuals of the powerful modern West, has not offered a fair shake to two-thirds of the world's population, who have lost their history and, with it, their organic ways of existence. ~ Wael B. Hallaq

In neoliberal victim theory, the rather uncompassionate conception of victimization as self-made – the idea that winners win and losers lose because they have simply chosen to do so – fairly obviously evacuates sociological explanation of social suffering, directly subverting progressive political efforts to make victimization through poverty, inequality, discrimination and violence visible as collective and socio-economically embedded in an array of intersecting engines of social hierarchy and difference. ~ Rebecca Stringer

At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that laborsaving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past ... From Progress and Poverty, To those who, seeing the vice and misery that spring from the unequal distribution of wealth and privilege, feel the possibility of a higher social state and would strive for its attainment. ~ Henry George

As journalist Matt Taibbi recalls in his book The Divide: It's become cliché by now, but since 2008, no high-ranking executive from any financial institution has gone to jail, not one, for any of the systemic crimes that wiped out 40 percent of the world's wealth. Even now, after JP Morgan Chase agreed to a settlement north of $13 billion for a variety of offenses.… the basic principle held true: nobody went to jail. Not one person. (...)

On the one hand, he finds, "Twenty-six billion dollars of fraud: no charges"; on the other, the San Diego County District Attorney's office conducts 26,000 warrantless, preemptive searches every year to make sure that welfare recipients really are exactly as poor as the poverty bureaucracy demands that they be. ~ Kristian Williams

Ask about these numbers and you hear other numbers. As usual, the fate of the poor hangs upon the decision of those concerned only with what those above them think. An endless cycle of egotism, self-sympathy. You see it everywhere here, those too weak and ashamed to defend themselves are blamed for their own misfortune. Separated and debased, they're swept deeper under society's carpet, thus the richest society in the history of the world lacks the will and conscience to end poverty while the poor become the victims of their own spiritual and physical misery . . ." In other words, according to Swigge, our job is to hide from the public's view the suffering and helplessness of the constituents of our largest minority, and thereby further diminish them in their eyes and in ours. ~ Philip Schultz