Poverty Line Quotes

Yes, there's a higher rate of people living below the poverty line who aren't vaccinated. But it's much rarer for that to be a product of choice than a product of circumstance. ~ Eula Biss

Half of all kids in public education are below the poverty line. Two-thirds of the achievement gap comes from factors outside of school. Teachers influence about seven to ten percent of what happens in kids' lives. When you think about those statistics, you have to think about how to re-envision education so it's holistic and so we share responsibility. ~ Randi Weingarten

Inflation is taking up the poverty line, and poverty is not just economic but defined by way of health and education. ~ Azim Premji

Today Americans living below the poverty line are not just light-years ahead of most Africans; they're light-years ahead of the wealthiest Americans from just a century ago. Today 99 percent of Americans living below the poverty line have electricity, water, flushing toilets, and a refrigerator; 95 percent have a television; 88 percent have a telephone; 71 percent have a car; and 70 percent even have air-conditioning. This may not seem like much, but one hundred years ago men like Henry Ford and Cornelius Vanderbilt were among the richest on the planet, but they enjoyed few of these luxuries. ~ Peter H. Diamandis

Many of us believe that if we only had more money, we would be happier. Yet--excluding those who live below the poverty line and cannot meet their basic needs for food, shleter, safety, or medical care--greater wealth generally does not lead to substantially greater well-being. One explanation for why more money does not bring lasting happiness is that people become accustomed to their higher standard of living and desire even more money to maintain their happiness. In addition, when people become wealthier, they tend to compare themselves to other wealthy people, rather than to their peers at their previous income levels. ~ Ted Cascio

My mother saved our home with a minimum wage job. But in the 1960s, a minimum wage job would support a family of three above the poverty line. Not today. Not even close. I understood right then that people can work hard, they can play by the rules, and they can still take a hard smack. ~ Elizabeth Warren

How well a posse policy will fare in a world with 3 billion people below the poverty line and nuclear warheads scattered around a dozen or more regions like melons in a field, is not easy to imagine. ~ Herbert Schiller

Publishing has no onus to be representative, but a fourth of America lives in conditions close to or below the poverty line. Think about the last time you read a novel in which someone went to cash a benefit check or paid for food in food stamps, or got off a double-shift at a retail store and were having their home or car repossessed. These are the conditions in which much of this country lives and it is a dereliction of capability (not duty) to ignore it in literature. ~ John Freeman

Despite America's first world economy, despite all the technical progress and productivity increases, there were still large numbers of people living well below the poverty line. The government had forced it. Low income citizens were addicted to minimum wage, welfare and Medicare, and it was impossible to wean them off. The secret effect was the creation of a slave class. Low level healthcare, food and shelter were provided, but what Thomas saw as he drove were people living lives worse than that of the average institutionalized prisoner. ~ Hunt Kingsbury

My advice: Don't quit. When I got to New York City, I lived so far below the poverty line, because I didn't give in and get a job at 7-Eleven. I think you can thrive in misery. ~ Rob Zombie

We have known for some time that the poor and ignored were the nonvoters, alienated from a political system they felt didn't care about them, and about which they could do little. Now alienation has spread upward into families above the poverty line. These are white workers, neither rich nor poor, but angry over economic insecurity, unhappy with their work, worried about their neighborhoods, hostile to government - combining elements of racism with elements of class consciousness, contempt for the lower classes along with distrust for the elite, and thus open to solutions from any direction, right or left. ~ Howard Zinn

The main environmental challenge of the 21st century is poverty. When you don't know where your next meal is coming from, it's hard to consider the environment 100 years down the line. ~ Bjorn Lomborg

Many people have a stereotype of what it means to be poor. And it may be somebody they see on the street corner with a sign: "Will work for food." And what they don't think about is that person who's struggling every day. Could be the person who waited on us, took our bank deposit, works in retail, but who is barely above the poverty line. ~ Robert D. Putnam

Imran Khan asked Pakistanis of four things at the Historic Lahore Jalsa.

1. We shall never lie and always speak the truth.
2. Leave our ego's behind and only think of this Nation, there are 11 crore Pakistanis living beneath poverty line.
3. We shall be brave and break the shackles of fear.
4. We have to bring Justice to this society, even if our friends and relatives do injustice, we shall be fair and bring them to Justice. ~ Imran Khan

Shyness is a luxury reserved for those who are above the poverty line. To a beggar, being shy is deadly. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31. ~ Dustin Hoffman

It would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going? ~ Robert Higgs

Since the day Martin Luther King was killed, the black middle classes have almost quadrupled, but the percentage of black children living on or below the poverty line is almost the same. ~ Henry Louis Gates

At the current $5.15 an hour, the federal minimum wage has become a poverty wage. A full-time worker with one child lives below the official poverty line. ~ Bernie Sanders

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

Having stumbled upon a tolerable career, for the first time in my life I was actually living above the poverty line. My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness. ~ Jon Krakauer

The poverty line is like the age of consent: if you find yourself parsing exactly where it is, you've probably already done something very, very wrong. ~ John Oliver

The first Parikrma school started in a slum where there were 70,000 people living below the poverty line. Our first school was on a rooftop of a building inside the slums, a second story building, the only second story building inside the slums. And that rooftop did not have any ceiling, only half a tin sheet. That was our first school. ~ Shukla Bose

My role is insignificant. Sure, there's diaper detail and fire watch and general fawning, but aside from keeping our noses above the poverty line, I'm as useful to the kid as a philosophy degree. ~ Gordon Highland

Even by the standards with which she is familiar, Liberia is exceptional. "Three quarters of the population live below the poverty line - that's one U.S. dollar a day - half are on less than fifty cents a day. What infrastructure there was has been destroyed - roads, ports, municipal electricity, water, sanitation, schools, hospitals - all desperately lacking or nonexistent; eighty-six-percent unemployment, no street lights. . . . ~ Zadie Smith

One result of this productive system is that the middle class has grown from being about 15 percent of the population in 1920 to being 86 percent of the population in 2011. While some of the population always seem to live at the poverty line, the vast majority of Americans today are affluent compared to their grandparents. They have the money to buy the products produced by American industry. In the process, the definition of poverty has changed. The majority of Americans who are classified by the government as living at the poverty level have indoor plumbing, color television sets, cell phones, air-conditioning, washers and dryers, microwaves, automobiles, and access to free health care. They are also a significant buying group. ~ Arthur Hughes

If one is working from the point of view of getting beauty into one's equation, ... one is on a sure line of progress. ~ Paul A.M. Dirac

We have not yet reached the goal but ... we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation. ~ Herbert Hoover

World Bank is a bank that's focused on economic development and poverty alleviation. ~ Jim Yong Kim

On the line beside Describe your family, I wrote, "Bad."

What is your favorite subject in school? "None."

List three of your favorite activities. "Soccer, ballet, and fighting."

Two of those favorite activities were lies but one of them was the truth.

I am fond of fighting. ~ Barbara O'Connor

Once, on a walk by a river- Eskdale in low reddish sunlight, with a dusting of snow- his daughter quoted to him an opening verse by her favourite poet. Apparently, not many young women loved Phillip Larkin the way she did. 'If I were to construct a religion/ I should make use of water.' She said she liked the laconic use of 'called in'- as if he would be, as if anyone ever is. They stopped to drink coffee from a flask, and Perowne, tracing a line of lichen with a finger, said that if he ever got the call, he'd make us of evolution. What better creation myth? An unimaginable sweep of time, numberless generations spawning by infinitesimal steps complex living beauty out of inert matter, driven on by the blind furies of random mutation, natural selection and environmental change, with the tragedy of forms continually dying, and lately the wonder of minds emerging and with them morality, love, art, cities- and the unprecedented bonus of this story happening to be demonstrably true. ~ Ian McEwan

There is scarcely a single joy or sorrow within the experience of our fellow-creatures which we have not tasted; yet the belief, in the good and beautiful has never forsaken us. It has been medicine to us in sickness, richness in poverty, and the best part of all that ever delighted us in health and success. ~ Leigh Hunt

If you count all forms of involuntary displacement - formal and informal evictions, landlord foreclosures, building condemnations - you discover that between 2009 and 2011 more than 1 in 8 Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move. ~ Matthew Desmond

There are two kinds of guilt. The kind that's a burden and the kind that gives you purpose. Let your guilt be your fuel. Let it remind you of who you want to be. Draw a line in your mind. Never cross it again. You have a soul. It's damaged but it's there. Don't let them take it from you. ~ Sabaa Tahir

[B]eyond poverty, beyond the point that the material needs are reasonably satisfied, only from within is peace. ~ Richard P. Feynman

Until fairly recently, every family had a cornucopia of favorite home remedies--plants and household items that could be prepared to treat minor medical emergencies, or to prevent a common ailment becoming something much more serious. Most households had someone with a little understanding of home cures, and when knowledge fell short, or more serious illness took hold, the family physician or village healer would be called in for a consultation, and a treatment would be agreed upon. In those days we took personal responsibility for our health--we took steps to prevent illness and were more aware of our bodies and of changes in them. And when illness struck, we frequently had the personal means to remedy it. More often than not, the treatment could be found in the garden or the larder. In the middle of the twentieth century we began to change our outlook. The advent of modern medicine, together with its many miracles, also led to a much greater dependency on our physicians and to an increasingly stretched healthcare system. The growth of the pharmaceutical industry has meant that there are indeed "cures" for most symptoms, and we have become accustomed to putting our health in the hands of someone else, and to purchasing products that make us feel good. Somewhere along the line we began to believe that technology was in some way superior to what was natural, and so we willingly gave up control of even minor health problems. ~ Karen Sullivan

There was a line from The Lady in the Lake I could have quoted him: "Police business is a hell of a problem. It's a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there's nothing in it to attract the highest type of men."
When Jake recognized that he had failed to live up to his responsibility to uphold that law, he had resigned. He had had the honor and the courage to step away. Not every man had that in him; I thought probably very few men did. ~ Josh Lanyon

Somewhere along the line, music became 'content' ... It's my full intention to bring it back to music again! I believe in the power of song. ~ Dave Sitek

Any life wasted or spent is gone and it will never come back. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Ya live your life like it's a coma
So won't you tell me why we'd wanna
With all the reasons you give it's
It's kinda hard to believe
But who am I to tell you that I've
Seen any reason why you should stay
Matbe we'd be better off
Without you anyway
You got a one way ticket
On your last chance ride
Gotta one way ticket
To your suicide
Gotta one way ticket
An there's no way out alive
An all this crass communication
That has left you in the cold
Isn't much for consolation
When you feel so weak and old
But is home is where the heart is
Then there's stories to be told
No you don't need a doctor
No one else can heal your soul

Got your mind in submission
Got your life on the line
But nobody pulled the trigger
They just stepped aside
They be down by the water
While you watch 'em waving goodbye
They be callin' in the morning
They be hangin' on the phone
They be waiting for an answer
When you know nobody's home
And when the bell's stopped ringing
It was nobody's fault but your own
There were always ample warnings
There were always subtle signs
And you would have seen it comin'
But we gave you too much time
And when you said
That no one's listening
Why'd your best friend drop a dime
Sometimes we get so tired of waiting
For a way to spend our time
An "It's so easy" to be ~ Guns N' Roses

Our generation of women is clearing the path for our daughters, granddaughters, women and girls down the line, to be safe to be the woman or girl they are. ~ Tabby Biddle

I have so many dreams of my own, and I remember things from my childhood, from when I was a girl and a young woman, and I haven't forgotten a thing. So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning? She didn't have the opportunity to pursue her dreams, and all by herself, faced everything the era dealt her, poverty and sadness, and she couldn't do anything about her very bad lot in life other than suffer through it and get beyond it and live her life to the very best of her ability, giving her body and her heart to it completely. Why did I never give a thought to Mom's dreams? ~ Shin Kyung-sook

Excuse me," someone said, interrupting a lively discussion about whom they'd each buy a drink for in the cantina.

The whole line looked up. There were two women standing on the sidewalk with bakery boxes. One of them cleared her throat. "We heard that people were camping out for Star Wars . . ."

"That's us!" Troy said, only slightly less enthusiastically than he'd said it yesterday.

"Where's everybody else?" she asked. "Are they around the back? Do you do this in shifts?"

"It's just us," Elena said.

"We're the Cupcake Gals," the other woman said. "We thought we'd bring Star Wars cupcakes? For the line?"

"Great!" Troy said.

The Cupcake Gals held on tight to their boxes.

"It's just . . ." the first woman said, "we were going to take a photo of the whole line, and post it on Instagram . . ."

"I can help you there!" Elena said. Those cupcakes were not going to just walk away. Not on Elena's watch.

Elena took a selfie of their line, the Cupcake Gals and a theater employee all holding Star Wars cupcakes - it looked like a snapshot from a crowd - and promised to post it across all her channels. The lighting was perfect. Magic hour, no filter necessary. #CupcakeGals #TheForceACAKEns #SalaciousCrumbs

The Gals were completely satisfied and left both boxes of cupcakes.

"This is the first time I've been happy that there were only three of us," Elena said, h ~ Rainbow Rowell

Centurion! Would you like to be a cavalryman one last time? There are Venicones who escaped when your line was broken to be hunted down, and Tribune Licinius has ordered me to take the best men available in their pursuit. Leave this hairy gentleman to watch the fun, and join us in the hunt! ~ Anthony Riches

South Africa does not have a poverty problem. Poverty is a result of denialism of the way corruption taxes poor people, the inefficiencies that undermine poor people's opportunities and our refusal to admit that we are part of the problem. ~ Mamphela Ramphele

We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid. ~ John Spratt

What shall I give my children? who are poor, / Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land ... ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

People who go to work every day and perform the services essential to keeping our economy functioning deserve to live above the poverty level. ~ Marcy Kaptur

If you're in poverty and all you have is a debit card or a prepaid card or you pay in cash, it does not report to a credit bureau. If it doesn't report to a credit bureau, it cannot create a credit score for yourself. ~ Suze Orman

Once you make a decision, you can never go back and change it. Sometimes, farther down the line, you have a chance to alter its effects. But the original decision is there forever. ~ Timothy Zahn

A call girl is simply someone who hates poverty more than she hates sin. ~ Sydney Biddle Barrows

Sara Scherr and Jeff McNeely have given us a thoughtful, sensible book about a topic of great importance to the world. There is no food security, no poverty reduction, no environmental sustainability without transforming our agricultural practices. The book ?presents well documented cases of best practices from all over the world. It should be required reading for all concerned with agriculture, the environment, food security or just the future of our children. ~ Ismail Serageldin

For what you call the Law is but a club of the rich over the lowest of men, sanctifying the conquest of the earth by a few and making their theft the way of things. But over and above these pitiful statutes of yours that enclose the common land and reduce us to poverty to make you fat stands the Law of Creation, which renders judgement on rich and poor alike, making them one. For freedom is the man who will thus turn the world upside down, therefore no wonder he has enemies ~ Gerrard Winstanley

Ayaana was surveying the longest line on the globe's three dimensional grid, the equator, the first line of latitude. Her special point zero, 40,075 kilometers long; 78.7 percent across water, 21.3 percent over land, zero degrees, all the Kenya equator places she had never imagined to claim as her own: Nanyuki, Mount Kenya. The invisible equator line crossed only thirteen countries - Kenya, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, São Tomé and Principe, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Uganda, Somalia, Maldives, Indonesia, and Kiribati - thirteen countries that were the center of the world, and hers was one of them. ~ Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Your stepfather? I'd like to meet him."
Oh no ... why?
"I'm not sure that's a good idea."
Christian unlocks the door, his mouth in a grim line.
"Are you ashamed of me?"
"No!" It's my turn to sound exasperated. "Introduce you to my dad as what? 'This is the man who deflowered me and wants to start a BDSM relationship'. You're not wearing running shoes. ~ E.L. James

No matter how you measure it, women and girls bear the brunt of poverty. But it's also clear that women are also our greatest hope for ending it. We at CARE have long believed that if you change the life of a girl or woman, you don't just change that individual, you change her family and then her community. ~ Helene D. Gayle

For a creative person there's just as much pleasure in writing an eight-line poem as there is in writing a blockbuster play ... of the old '50s type. ~ Tennessee Williams

As a historian, I confess to a certain amusement when I hear the Judeo-Christian tradition praised as the source of our concern for human rights. In fact, the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense. They were notorious not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression but for enthusiastic justifications of slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, genocide. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Poverty is economic oppression.
Tyranny is political oppression.
Oppose those who oppress others.
Support those who liberate others. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Here's a viewer's guide to BP media briefings. Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking about this on behalf of British Petroleum they are not telling you the truth. That's the bottom-line. ~ Anthony Weiner

I had been thinking independently about our ability to forget things that happened, specifically, events that clearly were wrong, that crossed the line. It seemed to me during the 2000 election recount that the media's narrative was being orchestrated. Shockingly, after the Supreme Court decision, the media simply said, "Time to move on," end of reporting: "Here's the new story." And everyone forgot. ~ Robert Kane Pappas

To think that this is my twentieth birthday, and that I've left my teens behind me forever," said Anne, who was curled up on the hearth-rug with Rusty in her lap, to Aunt Jamesina who was reading in her pet chair. They were alone in the living room. Stella and Priscilla had gone to a committee meeting and Phil was upstairs adorning herself for a party.

"I suppose you feel kind of sorry," said Aunt Jamesina. "The teens are such a nice part of life. I'm glad I've never gone out of them myself."

Anne laughed.

"You never will, Aunty. You'll be eighteen when you should be a hundred. Yes, I'm sorry, and a little dissatisfied as well. Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil. I don't feel that it's what it should be. It's full of flaws."

"So's everybody's," said Aunt Jamesina cheerfully. "Mine's cracked in a hundred places. Your Miss Stacy likely meant that when you are twenty your character would have got its permanent bent in one direction or 'tother, and would go on developing in that line. Don't worry over it, Anne. Do your duty by God and your neighbor and yourself, and have a good time. That's my philosophy and it's always worked pretty well. ~ L.M. Montgomery

I have to stop myself once an hour and remind myself that the universe isn't against me. That the woman in front of me in line at CVS didn't wake up and think, "I'm gonna make Iliza's life miserable today." (Honestly? Try as I might, I do believe there is a secret meeting in Los Angeles every morning at five where people gather and get their "Annoyance Assignments" for the day. I bet people are given tasks like, "just get in your car and drive on the freeway, any freeway; do whatever you can do to create more traffic and not contribute to society. Oh, and make sure that when your car breaks down, you never push it off to the shoulder." Or the people at the airport who don't know the rules. You know the ones. It's like, "WE ARE IN A TSA LINE! YES, YOU HAVE TO THROW OUT YOUR FUCKING WATER! YOU HAVE HAD TO THROW IT OUT FOR THE PAST SIXTEEN YEARS, TODAY ISN'T ANY DIFFERENT! THERE IS STILL A WAR ON TERROR!") ~ Iliza Shlesinger

If you ask who I aspire to, well, if a single line of mine was as funny as P. G. Wodehouse can be, that would be great. ~ Nick Harkaway

There are worse things than dying," the dude in The Lovers of Dust and Shadow says, faced with the prospect of losing his love. That line always stuck with me because of what he was saying: suffering can be worse. Pain can be worse. ~ Derek Milman

There's a fine line between being brave and just not giving a shit anymore. ~ Sara Furlong Burr

but remember there is a fine line between youngish and old. ~ Adrianne Byrd

Conlan could not wrench his gaze away as the legionaries in the distance lost cohesion and closed in on each other, their formation compromised no space to fight, many on the front line turned to take flight. ~ Jason K. Lewis

Sometimes I just get tired. I get headaches, and I just lose track. I mean, it's like which is me and which is the role? Where's the line between me and my shadow? ~ Haruki Murakami

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare. Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine. During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even, for food. ~ Jill Lepore

I found out about reviews early on. They're mostly written by sad men on bad afternoons. That's probably why I'm less angry than some writers, who are so narcissistic they consider every line of every review, even a thoughtful one, as major treason. ~ Barry Hannah