Famous Quotes on Poverty

Comments on poverty have invoked all kinds of emotions over the course of history.  The following list of poverty quotes is just a short sampling and in that list you will find great depth of passion, whimsical satire, and even attempts at humor.  We have listed most that we have found simply because almost any discussion on poverty continues to raise awareness of the real need and the real condition where billions of people barely survive.

Online Poverty Quote Authors

We publish the quotes on poverty we find on our social media sites including Facebook and Twitter but leave the author off the post.  Coming here reveals the author which sometimes helps to add context to the quote.  You may have come here from one of those placed looking for the author of the quote.  Simple match the number on the post to the number before the quote and the author will be listed.

Poverty Quote Listing

1  “Poverty is being single.” ― M.F. Moonzajer
2  “You can’t eat straight A’s.” ― Maxine Hong Kingston
3  “One does not go to Moscow to get fat.” ― John Updike
4  “Juice is a poor man’s dessert.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
5  “Most poverty is a lack of opportunity.” ― Adam LiVecchi
6  “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
7  “The surest way to remain poor is to be honest.” ― Napoleon
8  “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” ― Aristotle
9  “I love living in the ghetto!” #PoorMindSet” ― Habeeb Akande
10  “There is no Them. There are only facets of Us.” ― John Green
11  “We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won” ― Ronald Reagan
12  “I died last night. Seventy years too young.” ― Colin Thompson
13  “Don’t let affluence make you impoverished of God.” ― Jon Bloom
14  “Peanut butter is a poor man’s marmalade.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
15  “Thoughtless” minds are “pocket-less” beings” ― Ikechukwu Izuakor
16  “Riches without faith are the greatest poverty.” ― Hazrat Ali R.A
17  “Nothing awakens the conscience like a lot of money.” ― P Sainath
18  “Poverty is not a circumstance, it’s an attitude.” ― Rita Gonzalez
19  “An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.” ― Albert Einstein
20  “Those who criticize our generation forget who raised it.” ― Auliq Ice
21  “Poor is the man whom is not content with what he has.” ― Rita Gonzalez
22 “Poor people do not go on holiday; they go home.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
23  “You say you care about the poor? Tell me their names.” ― Craig Greenfield
24  “Poverty is not a disgrace, but it’s terribly inconvenient” ― Milton Berle
25  “Only the poor are handicapped by honor.” ― Naguib Mahfouz, القاهرة الجديدة
26  “For avarice begins where poverty ends.” ― Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions
27  “Poverty fled, she who gives birth to virile men.” ― Marcus Annaeus Lucanus
28  “Poverty is a dish best served with Potato Soup.” ― Stanley Victor Paskavich
29  “Poverty is spiritual halitosis.” ― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
30  “For a man who is in poverty, doomsday is already there!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
31  “Greed applied is prosperity realized”. ~R. Alan Woods [2006]” ― R. Alan Woods
32  “Toa msaada katika jamii iliyosaidia kukulea ulipokuwa mdogo.” ― Enock Maregesi
33 “Poverty doesn’t say so much about God as it says about us.” ― Justin Steckbauer
34  “Mtu anayesema pesa haijampa furaha hana nia ya kusaidia watu.” ― Enock Maregesi
35  “Poverty, for me, is synonymous with degradation.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
36  “How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness” ― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
37  “The beauty of learning is that it liberates us from poverty.” ― Lailah GiftyAkita
38  “Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die.” ― Bono
39 “We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.” ― Immanuel Kant
40  “Coca cola and McDonalds is spreading. Just like hunger and poverty.” ― Tim Goossens
41  “There’s a very fine line between being broke and being humble.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
42  “Such a little child To send to be a priestling… Icy poverty” ― Shiki, Japanese Haiku
43  “A Man’s management of his own purse speaks volumes about character” ― Thomas Jefferson
44  “Light’s all very well, brothers, but it’s not easy to live with.” ― Mikhail Zoshchenko
45  “The difference between the rich and the poor, is finding true love.” ― Anthony Liccione
46  “The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.” ― Oscar Wilde
47 “A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. ” ― Herman Melville
48  “There’s no snobbery like that of the poor toward one another.” ― Dorothy Salisbury Davis
49  “When the poverty comes in the room automatically love go from room windows.” ― AbdulNasir
50  “Poverty is a great cutter-off and riches a great shutter-off.” ― Lawrence Durrell, Justine
51 “To fight the poverty, we must feel the poverty.” ― M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
52  “The rich eat life, the poor eat death; so what is the problem they ask?” ― Anthony Liccione
53  “Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” ― Mother Teresa
54  “Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth.” ― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
55  “Those with the money are eccentric. Those without, insane.” ― Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I
56 “Rich people read their bills. Poor people dread theirs.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, N for Nigger
57 “Poverty must be eliminated or else the honour of humanity will vanish!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
58  “Poor is what people become, not what they are born to be.” ― Saji Ijiyemi, Don’t Die Sitting
59  “Better poverty without a care than wealth with its many obligations.” ― Aesop, Aesop’s Fables
60  “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” ― Woody Allen, Without Feathers
61  “When the poverty comes in the room automatically love go out from room windows.” ― AbdulNasir
62  “An investment in your country’s education pays the best interest.” ― Ishvind Kumar Caleechurn
63  “History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.” ― Jeffrey D. Sachs
64  “They [Harvard academia] liked the poor, but didn’t like the smell of the poor.” ― Chris Hedges
65  “It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.” ― Paul Farmer
66  “Poverty is like a crumb that sits at a table, and starves itself to death.” ― Anthony Liccione
67  “People who don’t have much get ugly about giving up the little they have left.” ― Andrew Vachss
68  “You can’t change generational poverty by sitting on your ass. Let’s get to work!” ― Damen Lopez
69  “We were born beggars, we will live like beggars and we will die like beggars.” ― M.F. Moonzajer
70  “Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor” ― Herman Melville
71  “We must powder our wigs; that is why so many poor people have no bread.” ― Jean-Jacques Rousseau
72  “He who mocked and laughed at correction should blame nobody for his doom.” ― Bamigboye Olurotimi
73  “Poverty is a mathematical proof of the fact that mankind is a big failure!” ― Mehmet Murat ildan
74  “That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.” ― George Gissing
75  “Enjoy a life of poverty. Become a poet.” ― Jarod Kintz, A Zebra is the Piano of the Animal Kingdom
76  “Do not work hard for the love of money; but work hard to enrich the life you love.” ― Wayne Chirisa
77  “My eyes open after my mind. All eyes always do.” ― Craig Stone, The Squirrel that Dreamt of Madness
78  “She missed — without knowing what she missed– paints and crayons” ― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
79  “Take a rain check on poverty with Cosmic Ordering.” ― Stephen Richards, The Cosmic Ordering Service
80 182 “It is good to stay in a peaceful poverty than to stay in a painful wealth.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
81  “He was breathing. That’s the first thing you always check for.” ― Carla H Krueger, The Social Worker
82  “For their holidays: the rich go see the world; the poor go see their parents.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
83 “Until you are there, you might not understand the language and pains of poverty” ― Ikechukwu Izuakor
84  “Poorest are closest to God, they sacrifice their life for making space for rich people” ― sadashivan
85  “The poor are not a problem but rather an opportunity to show unconditional love.” ― Dillon Burroughs
86  “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” ― Plutarch
87 “Being an altruist I have an urge in mylife to help poor’s but im not Bill Gates” ― Bilal Bashir Magry
88 “I’ve seen poverty & I can assure you that it’s ‘too dark’ (Black) in colour.” ― Cedric Namedi Mathuthe
89  “I’ve always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch
90  “Compared to the rest of the world, it’s like we’re living in Disneyland.” ― David Servant, Forever Rich
91  “Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.” ― Muhammad Ali
92  “When the statistics have a face, poverty becomes personal.” ― Marquita Burke-DeJesus, Radically Ordinary
93  “Because to the poor, books are not diversions. Book are siege weapons.” ― Joe Queenan, One for the Books
94  “We’re not stupid! We’re just poor! And we have a right to insist on this distinction” ― Orhan Pamuk, Snow
95  “You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.” ― Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes
96  “A wealthy and wise man doesn’t shake hands with people, he gives an helping hand.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
97  “I’m rich in poverty. I got no money coming out of my ass. I’m up to my neck in broke.” ― Jarod Kintz, $3.33
98  “Poverty is a result of poor choices not of poor luck” ― Celso Cukierkorn, Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
99  “Poverty was not created by God. It is we who have caused it, you and I through our egotism.” ― Mother Teresa
100 “A beautiful death is for people who lived like animals to die like angels—loved and wanted.” ― Mother Teresa