45 Poverty Quotes To Open Your Eyes

Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.
- Nelson Mandela

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
- Mahatma Gandhi

When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.
- Mother Teresa

If poverty is a disease that infects the entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community.
- President Barack Obama

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.
- Muhammad Ali

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.
- Anne Frank

Extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere.
- Kofi Annan

Just because a child's parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education and proper nutrition.
- Marian Wright Edelman

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful.
- Bill Gates

In this great country of ours, it is inexcusable that so many children grow up in poverty and despair. The well-being of our children must be the national priority and the responsibility of every individual.
- Jimmy Carter

Poverty is not only about income poverty, it is about the deprivation of economic and social rights, insecurity, discrimination, exclusion and powerlessness. That is why human rights must not be ignored but given even greater prominence in times of economic crisis.
- Irene Khan

A man who has gone even a week on bread and margarine is not a man any longer, only a belly with a few accessory organs.
- George Orwell

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

There is nothing greater than love invested in helping to feed the impoverished living in hunger.
- Wayne Chirisa

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.
- Benjamin Franklin

Poverty is a very complicated issue, but feeding a child isn't.
- Jeff Bridges

I know that government doesn't have the all solutions that real solutions do not come from the top down. Instead, the ways to end poverty come from all of us. We are part of the solution.
- Kathleen Blanco

If human beings are perceived as potentials rather than problems, as possessing strengths instead of weaknesses, as unlimited rather than dull and unresponsive, then they thrive and grow to their capabilities.
- Barbara Bush

A rich, robust, well-resourced public education is one of the best routes out of poverty and a pathway to prosperity.
- Randi Weingarten

I can't eradicate poverty, but at least for the people around me, I can help make sure no child is denied a dream.
- Priyanka Chopra

The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is enough .
- Dr. Wess Stafford

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

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

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
- John F. Kennedy

There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed.
- Frank Buchman

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 too little.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality exist in our world, none of us can truly rest.
- Nelson Mandela

Peace is not only the absence of war; as long as there is poverty, racism, segregation and exclusion we could hardly reach a world of peace.
- Rigoberta Menchú Tum

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
- Aristotle

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.
- Grace Abbott

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 Eisenhower

Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime.
- Chinese Proverb

Hunger makes a thief of any man.
- Pearl S. Buck

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

Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.
- Bono

In this increasingly interconnected world, we must understand that what happens to poor people is never divorced from the actions of the powerful. Certainly, people who define themselves as poor may control their own destinies to some extent. But control of lives is related to control of land, systems of production, and the formal political and legal structures in which lives are enmeshed. With time, both wealth and control have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. The opposite trend is desired by those working for social justice.
- Paul Farmer

We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?
- Indira Gandhi

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.
- Muhammad Yunus

People... were poor not because they were stupid or lazy. They worked all day long, doing complex physical tasks. They were poor because the financial institution in the country did not help them widen their economic base.
- Muhammad Yunus

Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society — how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.
- Muhammad Yunus

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society.
- Muhammad Yunus

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.
- Nelson Mandela

Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic growth… these are one and the same fight. We must connect the dots between climate change, water scarcity, energy shortages, global health, food security and women's empowerment. Solutions to one problem must be solutions for all.
- Ban Ki-moon

These days there is a lot of poverty in the world, and that's a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone. We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.
- Pope Francis

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.
- Bill Gates