Poor Neighborhoods Quotes

A month after the fall of the Berlin Wall the US invaded Panama, killing a couple of hundred or maybe a couple of thousand people, destroying poor neighborhoods, reinstating a regime of bankers and narcotraffickers - drug peddling and money laundering shot way up, as congressional research bureaus soon advised - and so on. That's normal, a footnote to history, but there were two differences: one difference is that the pretexts were different. This was the first intervention since the beginning of the Cold War that was not undertaken to defend ourselves from the Russians. This time, it was to defend ourselves from Hispanic narcotraffickers. Secondly, the US recognized right away that it was much freer to invade without any concern that somebody, the Russians, might react somewhere in the world, as former Undersecretary of State Abrams happily pointed out. ~ Noam Chomsky

When you live in a poor neighborhood, you are living in an area where you have poor schools. When you have poor schools, you have poor teachers. When you have poor teachers, you get a poor education. When you get a poor education, you can only work in a poor-paying job. And that poor-paying job enables you to live again in a poor neighborhood. So, it's a very vicious cycle. ~ Malcolm X

If you live in poor neighborhoods - I know from living in several poor neighborhoods - the worst supermarkets in the city are in the poorest neighborhoods, where people don't have cars. ~ Sandra Cisneros

My father's music gives hope to people and also inspires them to break the bonds of injustice and to be positive in life. I've seen that everywhere I go, especially in poor countries and poor neighborhoods. ~ Ziggy Marley

Tragedy happens - "tragic mistakes" happen - when men act according to their flawed natures, in fulfillment of their preordained destinies. The tragedy of the four killers of Amadou Diallo is that their deeds were made possible by their general preconceptions about black people and poor neighborhoods; by a theory of policing that encourages them to be rigid and punitive toward petty offenders; and by a social context in which the possession and use of firearms is so normative as to be almost beyond discussion. The tragedy of the street vendor Amadou Diallo is that he came as an innocent to the slaughter, made vulnerable by poverty and by the color of his skin. And the tragedy of America is that a nation which sees itself as leading the world toward a global future in which the American values of freedom and justice will be available for everyone fails so frequently and so badly to guarantee that freedom and that justice for so many people within its own frontiers. ~ Salman Rushdie

Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer. Joy today is increasingly saddled with moral and ideological burdens, so to speak. When someone rejoices, he is afraid of offending against solidarity with the many people who suffer. I don't have any right to rejoice, people think, in a world where there is so much misery, so much injustice.

I can understand that. There is a moral attitude at work here. But this attitude is nonetheless wrong. The loss of joy does not make the world better - and, conversely, refusing joy for the sake of suffering does not help those who suffer. The contrary is true. The world needs people who discover the good, who rejoice in it and thereby derive the impetus and courage to do good. Joy, then, does not break with solidarity. When it is the right kind of joy, when it is not egotistic, when it comes from the perception of the good, then it wants to communicate itself, and it gets passed on. In this connection, it always strikes me that in the poor neighborhoods of, say, South America, one sees many more laughing happy people than among us. Obviously, despite all their misery, they still have the perception of the good to which they cling and in which they can find encouragement and strength.

In this sense we have a new need for that primordial trust which ultimately only faith can give. That the world is basically good, that God is there and is good. That it is good to live and to be a human being. T ~ Benedict XVI

A white college student from a private college goes into a poor neighborhood and volunteers four hours a week and that's considered exemplary. [Whereas] a poor kid who lives in that community and takes care of all the kids in that neighborhood four hours every day is not seen as a volunteer. ~ Patricia Hill Collins

Now we Democrats believe that America is still the country of fair play, that we can come out of a small town or a poor neighborhood and have the same chance as anyone else, and it doesn't matter whether we are black or Hispanic, or disabled or women. ~ Ann Richards

Truly, I've learned more theology living in poor neighborhoods than in classrooms. At times I wonder if the questions of traditional theology have any meaning for the poor. And "the poor" here mean eighty percent of the population! (Ivone Gebara, p. 209) ~ Mev Puleo

Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of 'I do this and you give me cash' unless it's illegal. ~ Newt Gingrich

I've always felt that my first duty as an ethnographer was to make sure my work did not harm those who invited me into their lives. But this can be a complicated and delicate matter because it is not always obvious at first what does harm.4 Especially in poor neighborhoods, nothing is free. People get compensated for favors one way or another. Ned and Earl figured that if I was giving their girlfriends rides as they looked for housing and went about their business, I must be getting something in return. I was, of course: stories. That was the strange thing. Their accusations were perfectly valid, and I took them seriously. ~ Matthew Desmond

One commentator explained, African American women in poor neighborhoods are torn. They worry about their young sons getting involved in gang activity. They worry about their sons possibly selling or using drugs. They worry about their children getting caught in the crossfire of warring gangs ... These mothers want better crime and law enforcement. Yet, they understand that increased levels of law enforcement potentially saddle their children with a felony conviction - a mark that can ensure economic and social marginalization. ~ Michelle Alexander

I have chosen for my emblem a Star, representing the Virgin Mary, and the Eucharist. Those who know me as a professor of theology will remember my passion for the Eucharist from our classes. Blessed be God for this madness ... We must live our commitment to society steeped in the Eucharist. We must take the Eucharist to the streets, both in the heart of the city and on the outskirts, to the poor neighborhoods and to hospitals ... In order to obey the Resurrected Christ, I dare say with Pope John Paul II: 'Open wide the doors of your heart to the Holy Spirit.' ~ Nicolas Cotugno

An island Utopia in a modern, busy, everyday world. A land where there are neither rich nor poor. A heaven on earth - without a fence around it. ~ William Wrigley, Jr.

Long before there was discrimination against blacks, there was discrimination against white southerners. When large numbers of these country people moved north during World War II, they were aggressively excluded from neighborhoods, jobs, and homes - not because of their skin color, but their accents. ~ Ann Coulter

When I started my last business, I didn't receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can't handle that pressure. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

But I'm not just shocked. I'm also disappointed in May for allowing Z.G. to talk her into this. I'm angry at him for preying on her vulnerability. And I'm heartsick that May and I have to take it. This is how women end up on the street selling their bodies. But then this is how it is for women everywhere. You experience one lapse in conscience, in how low you think you'll go, in what you'll accept, and pretty soon you're at the bottom. You've become a girl with three holes, the lowest form of prostitute, living on one of the floating brothels in Soochow Creek, catering to Chinese so poor they don't mind catching a loathsome disease in exchange for a few humping moments of the husband-wife thing. ~ Lisa See

If you will cling to Nature, to the simple in Nature, to the little things that hardly anyone sees, and that can so unexpectedly become big and beyond measuring; if you have this love of inconsiderable things and seek quite simply, as one who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier, more coherent and somehow more conciliatory for you, not in your intellect, perhaps, which lags marveling behind, but in your inmost consciousness, waking and cognizance. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

when you walk, you look like you're trying to disappear.
your back is gonna be fucked up.
why do you think change is so hard? is it because you're afraid?
people might think you're pretty, but they'll never love you.
you talk like you're apologizing for your own voice.
speak up.
grow up.
find your spine, stop shrinking.
there is nothing brave about keeping silent.
how many times have you been in love? I can't picture it ever happening for you.
you lie because it makes you feel free. this is a prison.
you're always gonna think about him. you will never get him out of your system.
I wish I never had to see you again.
you poor thing.
go to hell.
you may be a nice person but you will never be a good person.
no one is ever going to want to touch you.
is there a vision in your head of who you want to be?
you do not have the strength to become her.
there is no boat big enough to keep you from drowning in the sea of yourself.
go to bed, baby.
you are tired from all of this nothing.
sleep.
rest. ~ Caitlyn Siehl

Poverty is not primarily about money. It is about having no idea what to do and/or having no one with whom to do it. The former I called imagination and the latter I called community. To the extent that our neighborhood had imagination and community, we were not poor. But without imagination and community, no money could help us. . . . The role of the local church is to be a community of imagination [for the kingdom].12 ~ David E. Fitch

If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle wiht the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expacted or hoped to see than on what was really there. ~ Madeleine K. Albright

A truly moral nation enacts policies that encourage personal responsibility and discourage self-destructive behavior by not subsidizing people who live irresponsibly and make poor choices. ~ Benjamin Carson

I could not help weeping with him - not over my own fate which, however clearly laid out, was just as sad as his, but over the injustices, the iniquities, and the crimes to which the exploited poor are always and everywhere subjected to, by a mob of scoundrels and trash who deck themselves out in many-colored robes, in helmet and plumed hats, in gold and silver embroideries, and take themselves titles of majesty, holiness, eminence, lordship, in order to fleece, bleed, and slaughter the poor. ~ Jean-Marie Deguignet

The poor need the motivation, the incentives, the skills, the education so they can help themselves. ~ John M. Perkins

At one of our closing meetings at the College, before the brethren went away for their vacation, I said that I was a poor man, or I would give every student a present, and I told them what I would have selected if I had been rich. I remember one brother to whom I said that I would give him a corkscrew, because he a a good deal in him, but he could not get it out. ~ Spurgeon, Charles H.

Globalism has less leeway for a poor country's brilliant sons. ~ Molly Crabapple

Whatever you're not telling me, let it go. Emotion leads to poor decisions. Poor decisions lead to scrutiny. Scrutiny is our greatest threat. ~ Ken Cruickshank

Look how the world's poor people are amazed at apparitions, signs and prodigies! ~ William Shakespeare

Niggerization is the result of oppression
and it doesn't just apply to the black people. Old people, poor people, and students can also get niggerized. ~ Florynce Kennedy

The interesting thing is, while we die of diseases of affluence from eating all these fatty meats, our poor brethren in the developing world die of diseases of poverty, because the land is not used now to grow food grain for their families. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

The worldview of the Left is a battle between rich and poor ~ Dennis Prager

I'm sorry, I don't mean to judge, but I've read the gospels quite a few times, and it seems pretty clear that 'Christian values' are: 1-humility, 2-non-judgementalism, 3-caring for the poor, 4-compassion, 5-love, and 6-serving God. ~ Moby

In Greece we're too poor to go to psychiatrists
we have friends instead. ~ Melina Mercouri

These educated parents subjected the poor five-year old girl to every possible torture. They beat her, flogged her, kicked her, not knowing why themselves, until her whole body was nothing but bruises; finally they attained the height of finesse: in the freezing cold, they locked her all night in the outhouse, because she wouldn't ask to get up and go in the middle of the night (as if a five-year-old child sleeping its sound angelic sleep could have learned to ask by that age)--for that they smeared her face with her excrement and made her eat the excrement, and it was her mother, her mother who made her! And this mother could sleep while her poor little child was moaning all night in that vile place! Can you understand that a small creature, who cannot even comprehend what is being done to her, in a vile place, in the dark and the cold, beats herself on her strained little chest with her tiny fist and weeps with her anguished, gentle, meek tears for 'dear God' to protect her--can you understand such nonsense, my friend and my brother, my godly and humble novice, can you understand why this nonsense is needed and created? Without it, they say, man could not even have lived on earth, for he would not have known good and evil. Who wants to know this damned good and evil at such a price? The whole world of knowledge is not worth the tears of that little child to 'dear God.' I'm not talking about the suffering of grown-ups, they ate the apple and to hell with them, let the devil ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There's a man with her. He's blonde, balding, harassed-looking, and probably what they call time-poor. Older. He looks at me over the steering wheel and gives a helpless, frustrated gesture, as though I should be able to identify and sympathize with his plight. Then, as the woman starts to open the car door, he stops her with a swift movement. And suddenly they're struggling, locked into a graceless, desperate tussle. I picture the dull, bestial unhappiness of a couple shackled to each other by their mortgage and their children's shareed DNA. ~ Liz Jensen

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

Just because I'm from North Harrow some people want me to be a proper chav. I'm not from a poor background, but we have a normal size house, and my mum is a nurse. I had to go to work otherwise I wouldn't be able to have done anything - there wasn't enough money for me to skive off. As for the Vicki Pollard thing - I don't let stuff like that bother me. I mean, she's a bit of a retard, isn't she? ~ Kate Nash

There is a difference between helping, comforting, feeding, and empowering people. As I've said many times: Simply giving money (or entitlements) to poor people only serves to keep them poor longer. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

Somebody says, 'Well, I can't be concerned about other people. About the best I can do is to take care of myself' Well, then you will always be poor. ~ Jim Rohn

I used to think there was only the divide, Silver and Red, rich and poor, kings and slaves. But there's much more in between, things I don't understand, and I'm right in the middle of it. ~ Victoria Aveyard

She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her ... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her ... ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Economic power is not the same as strength of national character. Our country may be rich in goods, but we are poor in spirit. ~ Richard M. Nixon

As a spiritual leader, you are here to serve; not to be served. Stop robbing the poor. Jesus came to serve. ~ Felix Wantang

Culturally we cherish a pregnant woman ... We say "Congratulations" when we see a pregnant woman, but there is usually an element of scandal associated with it. Pregnant women are either too young or too old, or it's too soon after another pregnancy, or she's going to get in trouble at work. She's too poor, too rich, too successful, too skinny, too fat, too crazy, too busy too single, too married, too too. ~ Jim Gaffigan

When a man gets up so high (spiritual mountaintop) that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong. ~ Dwight L. Moody

Poor as an honest lawyer. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Violence is a problem we all want to solve. I want to make sure that kids learn to deal with anger by learning how to talk with people to solve problems. Here in the United States Senate I want to make sure we have safe schools, safe neighborhoods and good things for kids to do after school! ~ Patty Murray

Nothing is more deflating to morale than to have a poor outcome pinned on someone who doesn't deserve it. It lacks integrity and overvalues the outcome at the expense of the people as well as the process. ~ Tony Dungy

In the Orwellian dystopia the original sin was thoughtcrime, but in our new corporate dystopia the secret inner crime is need, particularly financial need. People in America hide financial need like they hide sexual perversions.

Why? Because there's a direct correlation between need and rights. The more you need, the more you owe, the fewer rights you have.

Conversely, the less you need, the more you have, the more of a free citizen you get to be. On the extreme ends of this spectrum it is literally a crime to be poor, while a person with enough money literally cannot be prosecuted for certain kinds of crimes. ~ Matt Taibbi

I wish I were either rich enough or poor enough to do a lot of things that are impossible in my present comfortable circumstances. ~ Don Herold

Jimmy held on to the reins for dear life, and thought that a horse was about the most slippery creature to sit on that he had ever met. He slithered first one way and then another, and at last he slid off altogether and landed with a bump on the ground.
Sticky Stanley and Lotta held on to one another and laughed till the tears ran down their faces. They thought it was the funniest sight in the world to see poor Jimmy slipping about on the solemn, cantering horse. ~ Enid Blyton

I grew up in a little funny town called Xuzhou, in the countryside, very poor. We didn't have hot water. We were four children: three girls and a boy. ~ Wendi Deng Murdoch