Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Poverty

"It is poverty in a rich man to despise the poor and ignorance in a wise man to despise the ignorant." - Constance C. Vigil

"Ignorance, poverty, and vanity make many soldiers." - Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

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

"The problems we face today – violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger, and so on – are mainly problems created by humans. They can be resolved – but only through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. To do this, we need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and for the planet we share, based on a good heart and awareness." -

"Your contact with God lies in recognizing your identity, the “I am.” The “I am” is everything you arrogate to yourself in thought. If you say, “I am sick,” you have ordered your own. If you say, “I am well, I am one with God,” you have ordered your own. God is universal - “I am what I am” - and you as an individual particularize it when you say, “I am.” When you use your “I am” in an inverted or negative sense, you are using it against yourself and will bring sickness, poverty, controversy, and fear into your life. When you particularize, or individualize, Divine Power by using “I am” constructively, then you will get health, prosperity, and abounding happiness, for you will have identified yourself with God - the gold mine within." - Emmet Fox

"Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue." - Benjamin Franklin

"Too much to live with, too little to live for… In our own day this question of life purpose is more urgent than ever. Three factors have converged to fuel a search for significance without precedent in human history. First, the search for the purpose of life is one of the deepest issues of our experiences as human beings. Second, the expectation that we can all live purposeful lives has been given a gigantic boost by modern society’s offer of the maximum opportunity for choice and change in all we do. Third, our fulfillment is thwarted by this stunning fact: Out of more than a score of great civilizations in human history, modern Western civilization is the very first to have a no agreed-on answer to the question of the purpose of life… Most of us in the midst of material plenty, have spiritual poverty." - Os Guiness

"What the world needs is a sense of ultimate embarrassment. Modern man has the power and the wealth to overcome poverty and disease, but he has no wisdom to overcome suspicion. We are guilty of misunderstanding the meaning of existence; we are guilty of distorting our goals and misrepresenting our souls. We are better than our assertions, more intricate, more profound than our theories maintain." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Poverty urges us to do and suffer anything that we may escape from it, and so leads us away from virtue." -

"Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes." - Victor Hugo

"We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul." - William James

"Frugality may be termed the daughter of prudence, the sister of temperance, and the parent of liberty. Those that are extravagant will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence and invite corruption." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"Resolve not to be poor, whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness, it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The sense of boredom which… appears in analysis is simply an expression of the monotony and poverty of ideas, not of the unconscious… but of the analyst." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

"Poverty is not the root cause of crime." - Rush Limbaugh

"Poverty is not merely the lack of adequate financial resources. It entails a more profound kind of deprivation, a denial of full participation in the economic, social, and political life of society and an inability to influence decisions that affect one’s life. It means being powerless in a way that assaults not only one’s pocketbook but also one’s fundamental human dignity. Therefore, we should seek solutions that enable the poor to help themselves through such means as employment. Paternalistic programs which do too much for and too little with the poor are to be avoided." - National Conference of Catholic Bishops NULL

"The whole of religion is nothing but the sum of all relations of man to God, apprehended in all the possible ways in which any man can be immediately conscious in his life. In this sense there is but one religion, for it would be but a poverty-stricken and halting life, if all these relations did not exist wherever religion ought to be." - Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher

"World poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two [billion] villagers. The solution cannot be found in the cities of the poor countries. Unless life in the hinterland can be made tolerable, the problem of world poverty is insoluble and will inevitably get worse." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Prayer is the constant feeling (the recognition) of our infirmity or spiritual poverty, the sanctification of the soul, the foretaste of future blessedness, the angelic bliss, the heavenly rain, refreshing, watering, and fertilizing the ground of the soul, the power and strength of the soul and body, the purifying and freshening of the mental air, the enlightenment of the countenance, the joy of spirit, the golden link, uniting the creature to the Creator." - John Sergieff of Cronstadt, aka Saint John of Kronstadt, born John Iliytch Sergieff

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." - Herbert Alexander Simon

"Let us remember that no blessing of God is so sweet as life and liberty. Let us remember that the stature of all mankind is diminished so long as nations or parts of nations are still unfree. Let us remember that the highest purpose of man is the liberation of man from his bonds of fear, his bonds of human degradation, his bonds of poverty – the liberation of man from the physical, spiritual, and intellectual bonds which for too long stunted the development of mankind’s majority." - Achmad Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo

"Wealth and honor, benefits and blessings shall enrich my life; poverty and failures, grief and anxiety shall help fulfill it. In my life, I will serve heaven and earth; in death I will find peace." - Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai

"How could sufferings be relieved through purification? To know the Path is to get lost at the ford. Indeed, sickness comes from worldly love and poverty begins with the pursuit of greed." - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng

"As long as our leaders believe they can’t win votes by working to reduce poverty, the media will continue to focus on politician’s efforts to increase safety by fighting terrorism." - Jurriaan Kamp

"You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money."" - P. J. O'Rourke

"Poverty wants some things, luxury many, avarice all things." -

"Poverty wants some things, luxury many, avarice all things." - Abraham Cowley

"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson

"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." -

"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." -

"The army is a good book to open to study human life. One learns there to put his hand to everything to the lowest and highest things. The most delicate and rich are forced to see living nearly everywhere poverty, and to live with it, and to measure his morsel of bread and draught of water." - Alfred Victor de Vigny

"In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds" - Aristotle NULL

"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime." - Aristotle NULL

"To leave the number of births unrestricted, as is done in most states, inevitably causes poverty among the citizens, and poverty produces faction and crime." - Aristotle NULL

"Poverty and slavery are… only two forms of – one might almost say two words for – the same thing, the essence of which is that a man’s energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others; the outcome being partly that he is overloaded with work, partly that his needs are very inadequately met." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Remember the time of famine in the time of plenty, and poverty and want in the days of wealth." - Ben Sira

"Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no: poverty and unhappiness are man's doing." - Bertolt Brecht

"Poverty is not wholly a personal failure. It also represents the failure of an economic system. And the remedy is not wholly one of charity, but of political and economic action. Poverty is a reflection also no those who are not poor." -

"Augur said, " Give me neither poverty or riches"' and this will ever be the prayer of the wise. Our incomes should be like our shoes: if too small, they will gall and pinch us, but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip. But wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little, and wants less, is richer than he that has much, but wants more." - Charles Caleb Colton

"If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth; but if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas than one hole in our coat." - Charles Caleb Colton

"To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Poverty is uncomfortable, as I can testify; but nine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself." - Charles A Garfield

"The superior man is anxious lest he should not get truth; he is not anxious lest poverty should come upon him." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"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, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"If you do not desire much, little will seem much to you, for small wants give poverty the power of wealth." - Democritus NULL

"Three were the fates, - gaunt poverty that chains, gray drudgery that grinds the hope away, and gaping ignorance that starves the soul." - Edwin Markham

"Sloth is the parent of poverty." - English Proverbs