.

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They argue that poor communities share and help each other more

• A community that is growing rich and seeks only to defend its goods and its reputation is dying. It has ceased to grow in love. A community is alive when it is poor and its members feel they have to work together and remain united, if only to ensure that they can all eat tomorrow! Jean Vanier
• When people have all the material things they need, they seem not to need each other. They are self-sufficient. There is no interdependence. There is no love. In a poor community, however, there is often a lot of mutual help and sharing of goods, as well as help from outside. Poverty can even become a cement of unity. Jean Vanier
• Affluence separates people. Poverty knits ’em together. You got some sugar and I don’t; I borrow some of yours. Next month you might not have any flour; well, I’ll give you some of mine. Ray Charles
• If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones. John Steinbeck
• Adversity,  Wealth,  Limitation,  Equality,  Despair

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They argue that poor communities tend to be more loving and hospitable

• When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don’t need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest. If our own life is luxurious and wasteful, we can’t approach poor people. If we love people, we want to identify with them and share with them. Jean Vanier
• Like many other virtues, hospitality is practiced in its perfection by the poor. If the rich did their share, how would the woes of this world be lightened! C.M. Kirkland
• Hospitality,  Love

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They argue poverty can be a motivational spur …

• Men are naturally lazy and require some great stimulus to goad their flagging ambitions and enable them to overcome the inertia which comes from ease and the consciousness of inherited wealth. Whatever lessens in a young man the feeling that he must make his way in the world cripples his chance of success. Poverty has ever been the priceless spur that has goaded man up to his own loaf. Orison Swett Marden
• Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life. Jimmy Dean

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… rousing people to overcome hardships and difficulties …

• Riches and ease, it is perfectly clear, are not necessary for man’s highest culture, else had not the world been so largely indebted in all times to those who have sprung from the humbler ranks. An easy and luxurious existence does not train men to effort or encounter with difficulty; nor does it awaken that consciousness of power which is so necessary for energetic and effective action in life. Indeed, so far from poverty being a misfortune, it may, by vigorous self-help, be converted even into a blessing; rousing a man to that struggle with the world in which, though some may purchase ease by degradation, the right- minded and true-hearted will find strength, confidence, and triumph. Samuel Smiles

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… even leading to greatness

• As in the rankest soil the most beautiful flowers are grown, so in the dark soil of poverty the choicest flowers of humanity have developed and bloomed.  James Allen
• Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty. Gerald Lieberman
• The greatest man in history was the poorest. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Poverty sits by the cradle of all our great men and rocks all of them to manhood. Heinrich Heine
• Poverty often hides her charms under an ugly mask; yet thousands have been forced into greatness by their very struggle to keep the wolf from the door. Orison Swett Marden
• Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation. Khalil Gibran
• Greatness

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They argue poverty can be a source of artistic inspiration

• I think most art comes out of poverty and hard times. Willie Nelson
• Inspiration

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Poverty has no virtue

• Let us be done with thinking poverty is a virtue. It is a common vice.  Catherine Ponder
• Poverty is a noose that strangles humility and breeds disrespect for God and man. Native American Proverb
• Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools. K. Rowling
• Poverty is very good in poems … in maxims and in sermons, but it is very bad in practical life. Henry ward Beecher
• Virtue

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Poverty is an evil in a world of plenty

• All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil. Samuel Johnson
• As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares. Daniel Defoe
• I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Robert Kennedy
• Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our times — times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accumulation — that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils.  Nelson Mandela

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Poverty greatly limits human potential and self-actualisation

• For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred. John Gardner
• Whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavorable to the exercise of the higher functions of the mind and soul. The poor man is hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never knows. William Mathews
• Potential

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Poverty cannot be hidden and can be a source of deep shame

• You’re going to tell me that poverty’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s not true, though. If you can’t hide it, then it is something to be ashamed of. There’s nothing you can do, you’re ashamed just the same, the way you’re ashamed when you leave a spot on somebody’s table. No matter if it’s deserved or not, honorable or not, poverty stinks. Yes, stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an airshaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage. It can’t be wiped away. It doesn’t help to put on a new hat, any more than rinsing your mouth helps when you’re belching your guts out. It’s around you and on you and everyone who brushes up against you or looks at you knows it. Stefan Zweig
• 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
• The burden of poverty isn’t just that you don’t always have the things you need, it’s the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you’d do anything to lift that burden. Jay-Z
• Shame

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While there is no disgrace in being poor, it might as well be

• Poverty is my pride. Muhammed
• Poverty is no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient. Sydney Smith
• Poverty is no disgrace. But it is certainly not a recommendation. Napoleon Hill
• Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is. Benjamin Franklin
• Every man has a right to be poor. Richard Jefferies
• It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be. Kin Hubbard
• American humorist Kin Hubbard said, “It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be”. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue… Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.  Kurt Vonnegut

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Poverty is an enemy of happiness and freedom

• 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
• One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. Virginia Woolf
• A hungry man is not a free man. Adlai Stevenson
• Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. J. K. Rowling
• Poverty makes you sad as well as wise. Bertolt Brecht
• With poverty everything becomes frightful. Nicolas Boileau
• Unhappiness

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Poverty is a restrictive and tedious trap

• The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time. Willem de Kooning
• Poverty is restriction and as such, it is the greatest injustice you can perpetrate upon yourself. Stuart Wilde
• Boredom is the keynote of poverty — of all its indignities, it is perhaps the hardest of all to live with — for where there is no money there is no change of any kind. Moss Hart
• It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty. Juvenal

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Poverty is a form of violence

• Poverty is the worst form of violence. Mahatma Gandhi
• It is a common condition of being poor…you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them. Rick Bragg
• Violence

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Poverty causes a multitude of social ills …

• 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
• We’re looking at the singular condition of poverty. All the other individual problems spring from that condition… doesn’t matter if it’s death, aid, trade, AIDS, famine, instability, governance, corruption or war. All of that is poverty. Our problem is that everybody tries to heal each of the individual aspects of poverty, not poverty itself. Bob Geldof
• 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. Barack Obama

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… including crime

• Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth. Mark Twain
• Poverty is the mother of crime. Marcus Aurelius
• Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Aristotle
• The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor. H. L. Mencken
• Hunger makes a thief of any man. Pearl S. Buck

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Poverty breeds conflict, unrest, insecurity and violence …

• Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
• Hunger, disease and poverty can lead to global instability and leave a vacuum for extremism to fill. So instead of just managing poverty, we must offer nations and people a pathway out of poverty. President Barack Obama
• Development is a fundamental part of our national security. It is extreme poverty- the realities of access to water and food- which create the long-term drivers of our insecurity. Most wars are fought over scarce resources and that is going to accelerate in the future. Rajiv Shah
• Global poverty is one of the most pressing moral challenges we face today. Yet, it’s more than just a moral problem that billions of people around the world are struggling to survive. It is also in our national security interests that we reduce global poverty. Populations that struggle in extreme poverty are more likely to become mired in destabilizing conflicts, or worse, become havens or recruiting grounds for terrorist organizations. This is an issue that we cannot afford to neglect. Congressman Adam Smith
• Poverty devastates families, communities and nations. It causes instability and political unrest and fuels conflict. Kofi Annan
• Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. Frederick Douglass
• Too many of the conflicts which are caused today are caused by the problems that emerge from people who are in poverty. James Wolfensohn
• Security, the chief pretence of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone’s head. George Bernard Shaw
• Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism. Jeffrey Sachs
• Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign. It does not flourish where there is ignorance and a lack of education and information. Repression, injustice and exploitation are inimical with peace. Peace is gravely threatened by inter-group fear and envy and by the unleashing of unrealistic expectations. Racial, class and religious intolerance and prejudice are its mortal enemies. Frederik W. de Klerk

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… and even revolution

• When you have half of Caironese in slums, when you don’t have clean water, when you don’t have a sewer system, when you don’t have electricity, and on top of that you live under one of the most repressive regimes right now… Well, put all that together, and it’s a ticking bomb. It’s not of a question of threat; it is question of looking around at the present environment and making a rational prognosis. Mohamed ElBaradei

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Poverty brings hunger and even starvation to millions

• Hunger makes a thief of any man. Pearl S. Buck
• Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving. Henry
• To a man with an empty stomach food is God. Gandhi
• There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. Mahatma Gandhi
• Society comprises two classes: those who have more food than appetite, and those who have more appetite than food. Sébastien-Roch Nicholas de Chamfort
• An empty stomach is not a good political adviser. Albert Einstein

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Poverty is a massive killer

• Every morning our newspapers could read, ‘More than 20,000 people perished yesterday of extreme poverty.’ How? The poor die in hospital wards that lack drugs, in villages that lack antimalarial bed nets, in houses that lack safe drinking water. They die namelessly, without public comment. Sadly, sad stories rarely get written. Jeffrey Sachs
• By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense. Brad Pitt

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Some argue that the poor can escape poverty by hard work …

• Work banishes those three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty. Voltaire
• Few things in this world trouble people more than poverty, or the fear of poverty; and indeed, it is a sore affliction; but, like all other ills that flesh is heir to, it has its antidote, its reliable remedy. The judicious application of industry, prudence, and temperance is a certain cure. Hosea Ballou
• Work

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… while others point out that being poor is actually constant hard work

• Some people think that poor people are lazy. Actually, it takes a lot of work to survive when you are dirt-     Muhammad Yunus
• There’s an awful lot of misunderstanding here about what being poor actually means. I don’t think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there’s some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything. It is remarkable how many misconceptions there are here about life in the developing world and I think that that knowledge gap has done a lot to contribute to the imbalance quite frankly. Emma Thompson

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Being poor is very expensive

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

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Money may not bring happiness, but poverty brings misery

• It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed. Kin Hubbard
• Money can’t buy happiness, but neither can poverty. Leo Rosten
• The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty- stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man. George Bernard Shaw
• Suffering

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Poverty crushes the best in people, including hope and aspiration

• What a devil art thou, Poverty! How many desires – how many aspirations after goodness and truth – how many noble thoughts, loving wishes toward our fellows, beautiful imaginings thou hast crushed under thy heel, without remorse or pause! Walt Whitman
• Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit. Eli Khamarov
• What a weary time those years were — to have the desire and the need to live but not the ability. Charles Bukowski
• The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. Adam Smith
• The poor man is not he who is without a cent, but he who is without a dream. Harry Kemp
• Hope,  Despair

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Many argue the enormous inequality between rich and poor in today’s world is unsustainable

• A global human society, characterised by islands of wealth, surrounded by a sea of poverty, is unsustainable. Thabo Mbeki
• A world where one tenth of the population gets to be extremely wealthy, and six tenths very poor, is not, in the long run, a stable place. Bill McKibben
• The wealthiest 300 people have greater riches than the three billion poorest. The three wealthiest people have greater riches than the 48 poorest countries put together. With only limited environmental space to accommodate the expected 9 billion human inhabitants of the world by 2050, such disparities in consumption are clearly not sustainable. Tony Juniper
• Obscene richness in the light of extreme poverty is a grave injustice. Hanno Langenhoven
• An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. Plutarch
• Wealthy men can’t live in an island that is encircled by poverty. We all breathe the same air. We must give a chance to everyone, at least a basic chance. Ayrton Senna
• It is not great wealth in a few individuals that proves a country is prosperous, but great general wealth evenly distributed among the people. . .Victoria Woodhull
• Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
• There are now almost as many overweight people in the world (1.2bn) as there are underfed and malnourished. The overweight are almost all in developed countries, the malnourished in developing ones. Jules Peck & Robert Phillips

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To allow poverty in a world of plenty is wrong …

• When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor. Basil the Great
• 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
• If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. Charles Dickens
• No one who works for a living should live in poverty. Senator Edward Kennedy

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… even ugly, unjust and obscene

• The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don’t have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made. Sionil José
• Poverty is ugly! No-one should have to live facing these circumstances. Poverty excludes people. It prevents them from getting access to services. It often renders them powerless. It is unjust. Nigel Branken

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Some point out that it’s a tragedy that we spend billions on arms while people starve

• 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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Because there is global insecurity, nations are engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on instruments of destruction, when millions are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is extended so obscenely on defence budgets would make a real difference in enabling God’s children to fill their stomachs, be educated, and be given the chance to lead fulfilled and happy lives. Desmond Tutu

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It is also a tragedy is that much of the poverty in the world is man- made …

• The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich.  Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash.  The twentieth- century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.  John Berger

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… caused not by natural scarcity, but human institutions …

• They 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
• If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. Charles Darwin

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… caused by lack of capital …

• If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty. Muhammad Yunus

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… caused by ideologies and policies which serve privilege …

• Poverty is not something people impose on themselves for want of effort and community organisation. It is constructed by divisive and discriminatory laws, inflexible organisations, acquisitive ideologies of wealth, a deeply rooted class system and policies which serve privilege in the short term and destroy society in the long term. Peter Townshend
• The poor are poor because the rich are rich.

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… caused even by blatant greed

• Of course I am frustrated with regard to extreme poverty, to violence that never seems to cease. Greed is the key. It’s easy to sit in relative luxury and peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third World debts. Not many of us are willing to give up everything we have. We can however give some, and millions of people do, governments do, but there is so much more to be done. Sir Roger Moore
• There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed. Gandhi
• Greed

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Poverty is greatly exacerbated by uncontrollable population growth

• The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrollable way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us and it is the poor people of the world who will suffer most. Sir David Attenborough
• The only bird that gives the poor a real tumble is the stork. Wilson Mizner

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Religion is sometimes blamed for keeping the poor quiet

• Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Napoleon Bonaparte
• Religion is the opium of the poor. Ernest Hemingway
• If the poor man’s earthly lot is hard, it makes more welcome the suggestions of heaven. H. Chapin
• Poverty … is already half-Christian by its very nature; it has everything to gain by a doctrine which makes so little of the present and the visible, and so much of the future and the unseen. Henry Parry Liddon

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Poverty is a profoundly human issue and can only be solved by concerted human effort

• The issue of poverty is not a statistical issue. It is a human issue. James Wolfensohn
• The problems we face today, violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger and so on, are human- created problems which can be resolved through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. We need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and the planet we share. 14th The Dalai Lama
• In this new century, many of the world’s poorest countries remain imprisoned, enslaved and in chains. They are trapped in the prison of poverty. It is time to set them free. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made, and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Nelson Mandela

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Tackling poverty is a collective responsibility

• Abolishing poverty in the 21st century must become a collective responsibility since human life is not safe in the rich nations if human despair travels in poor nations. Mahub Ul Haq
• Poverty, the racial divide and social injustice do not impact only those who suffer most visibly. Alleviating poverty and injustice is a responsibility we must never forget or abandon. Marc Morial
• 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

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Not only is there a moral responsibility to tackle poverty …

• A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow in their own gift. Jean Vanier
• The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. Proverbs 29:7
• The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is. Howard Zinn
• He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. Proverbs 14:31

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… but it is also the loving thing to do

• Pay attention to the hungry, both in this country and around the world. Pay attention to the poor. Pay attention to our responsibilities for world peace. We are our brother’s keeper…George McGovern
• Love of the helpless one, love of the poor and the stranger, are the beginning of brotherly love. To love one’s flesh and blood is no achievement. Erich Fromm
• We must work to ensure the human dignity that comes with a life free from hunger and poverty. Julian R. Hunte

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Tackling poverty is not about charity, it’s about justice

• Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made, and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom. Nelson Mandela
• The poverty and long suffering of farmers and indigenous peoples that I have seen has planted in me the principle that justice must be fought for them. Dewi Rana Amir
• This is not about charity, it’s about justice… The war against terror is bound up in the war against poverty – I didn’t say that, Colin Powell said that . . . In these disturbing and distressing times, surely it’s cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than it is to defend yourself against them. Justice is the surest way to get peace.  Bono
• 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
• Until it’s understood to involve justice for those in poverty, a future for generations yet unborn, and a commitment to the rest of creation, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to overcome the status quo. Bill McKibben
• Obscene richness in the light of extreme poverty is a grave injustice. Hanno Langenhoven
• The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern. Proverbs 29:7
• Justice

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Many argue we now have what it takes to tackle poverty on a global scale

• The good news is we have the technology and the tools to alleviate poverty on a global scale. All that is standing in our way is education and will. Natalie Portman
• The fact is that this generation — yours, my generation … we’re the first generation that can look at poverty and disease, look across the ocean to Africa and say with a straight face, we can be the first to end this sort of stupid extreme poverty, where in the world of plenty, a child can die for lack of food in its belly. Bono
• The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life. John F. Kennedy
• Poverty is unnecessary. Muhammad Yunus

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Let us dream of a future where poverty exists only in a museum …

• 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 does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That’s where it will be. Muhammad Yunus
• 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
• My vision for the future? … a world completely free from poverty. Muhammad Yunus

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… and a world where at least the basic needs of all are met

• 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
• Basic human rights cannot thrive in places where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. S. National Security Strategy
• Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all. Let each know that for each the body, the mind and the soul have been freed to fulfill themselves. Nelson Mandela

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Charity is no cure for poverty for it reduces initiative and self esteem

• You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money. J. O’Rourke
• When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences. Muhammad Yunus
• Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. Henry Ford
• People from both political parties have long recognized that welfare without work creates negative incentives that lead to permanent poverty. It robs people of self-esteem. Mitt Romney
• True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. Martin Luther King Jr
• Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. Maimonides
• Initiative,  Self-esteem

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Tackling poverty must be centred on work, not welfare

• Any strategy to reduce intergenerational poverty has to be centered on work, not welfare– not only because work provides independence and income but also because work provides order, structure, dignity, and opportunities for growth in people’s lives. Barack Obama

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Tackling poverty must focus on promoting initiative amongst the poor

• 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. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. Benjamin Franklin

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Foreign aid must never be an end in itself

• Foreign Assistance is not an end in itself. The purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it is no longer needed. President Barack Obama
• Foreign aid: Taxing poor people in rich countries for the benefit of rich people in poor countries.  Bernard Rosenberg

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Tackling poverty must focus on education and skills development

• 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
• Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty. Lyndon B. Johnson
• Education,  Skill

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Tackling poverty must be seen as a long-term initiative

• Such is the scale and depth of poverty in many parts of the world that it won’t be ended overnight. That is why if, like me, you want to see an end to poverty, you need to be in it for the long haul. Annie Lennox

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Tackling poverty needs inspired ideas and thinking

• The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were. JFK

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Tackling poverty needs concerted and co-ordinated international efforts

• Poverty is a scourge that must be overcome, and this can only be accomplished through concerted international efforts involving effective partnerships between developed and developing countries and between government, the private sector and civil society. Dr.HAN Seung-soo
• There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty. Andrew Cuomo
• Cooperation,  Teamwork

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Tackling poverty requires greater gender equality

• Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance. Kofi Annan
• Gender equality

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Tackling poverty requires economic development

• The rich do not have to invest enough in the poorest countries to make them rich; they need to invest enough so that these countries can get their foot on the economic ladder . . . Economic development works. It can be successful. It tends to build on itself. But it must get started. Jeffrey Sachs
• Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. George C. Marshall
• One of the best ways countries can combat poverty is to use development assistance to promote a growing private sector, in which the poor can fully participate. John Danilovich

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Tackling poverty requires more equitable trade terms

• Trade justice for the developing world and for this generation is a truly significant way for the developed countries to show commitment to bringing about an end to global poverty.  Nelson Mandela

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Tackling poverty requires making capital available to the poorest

• Small loans can transform lives, especially the lives of women and children. The poor can become empowered instead of disenfranchised. Homes can be built, jobs can be created, businesses can be launched, and individuals can feel a sense of worth again. Natalie Portman

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Tackling poverty needs to focus on increasing the size of the pie as well as sharing the pie more equitably

• The two accepted ways of reducing poverty are to either increase the size of the pie we all share or share the pie more equitably. Jules Peck & Robert Phillips

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Some argue that simply increasing the pie through economic growth and allowing that growth to trickle down to the poor is not enough

• In the 1980s it took around $45 of global economic growth to generate $1 poverty reduction to people on $1/day or under. Today it takes $166 of global economic growth to generate $1 of poverty reduction for people living below $1/day. So now the rich have to get much richer for the poor to get just slightly less poor. And all that extra wealth for the rich is eating up our planet. This growth is pushing the planet to the edge of collapse and not getting us anywhere near equity. The rich get much richer, the poor get fractionally less poor and the planet burns. And it is the poor and mostly women who suffer most from ecological damage and are most threatened by climate change. The rich can buy Evian and move to a golf course slightly more inland – the poor have nowhere to go. Jules Peck & Robert Phillips
• Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralised workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. Pope Francis

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At the same time, poverty cannot be tackled by destroying the rich

• You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. William J. H. Boetcker

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Initiatives to tackle poverty must take the health of the planet into account

• All our efforts to defeat poverty and pursue sustainable development will be in vain if environmental degradation and natural resource depletion continue unabated. Kofi Annan
• Forget about making poverty history. Climate change will make poverty permanent. Nazmul Chowdhury
• Those who consume far more resources than they require destroy the life chances of those whose survival depends upon consuming more. George Monbiot
• Care for the environment

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Tackling poverty will promote greater global peace …

• My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace – it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world. So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty. Aung San Suu Kyi
• Peace will never be entirely secure until men everywhere have learned to conquer poverty without sacrificing liberty or security. Norman Thomas
• I was deeply concerned then, and have become more concerned since, that unless we can deal with the questions of development and the questions of poverty, there’s no way that we’re going to have a peaceful world for our children. James Wolfensohn
• Wars are bred by poverty and oppression. Continued peace is possible only in a relatively free and prosperous world. George C. Marshall
• Inner peace

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… making the world safer and more prosperous

• I believe that the world will be a safer place if there is enough food to go around, that it will be a more stable place if children grow up with opportunities instead of frustrations. Furthermore, I can only assume that if the United States plays a role in helping to create prosperous societies, we will have friends to call on in times of need. Bill Gates
• Globalization has improved the lives of people throughout the world, but it has also widened the gap between rich and poor…Working to end poverty will make the world safer. Robert Alan Silverstein
• Poverty, disease, debt, lack of quality education, rising population, and conflict put massive pressure on developing countries. The combination of these pressures can breed hopelessness, which at its worst can be fertile ground for terrorism, extremism and instability.  In helping poor countries stave off these pressures, we can improve global security and promote economic growth.  Providing hope and opportunity to the poor creates stability and prosperity not just for them, but for the world. Initiative for Global Development Report 2004
• Prosperity

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Tackling poverty is a security imperative

• Development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers. Robert Gates
• It’s a moral imperative, it’s an economic imperative, and it is a security imperative. For we’ve seen how spikes in food prices can plunge millions into poverty, which, in turn, can spark riots that cost lives, and can lead to instability.  And this danger will only grow if a surging global population isn’t matched by surging food production.  So reducing malnutrition and hunger around the world advances international peace and security — and that includes the national security of the United States.  President Barack Obama
• The worst nightmare for al Qaeda is to come into a community that feels supported and has hope. Sen. Lindsay Graham
• Proactively investing in stronger societies and human welfare is far more effective and efficient than responding after state collapse. S. National Security Strategy

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Tackling poverty will promote human rights

• Basic human rights cannot thrive in places where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. S. National Security Strategy
• Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free. 14th The Dalai Lama

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Do your bit to tackle poverty knowing you can make a difference

• Poverty is a very complicated issue, but feeding a child isn’t. Jeff Bridges
• Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person’s life. Naveen Jain
• One person can make a difference and every person should try. John F. Kennedy
• To whom much is given, much is required. John F. Kennedy
• Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. President Barack Obama
• If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.  Anaïs Nin

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Traditionally, the rich have tended to fear and even despise the poor …

• 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.  William James
• Come away; poverty’s catching. Aphra Behn
• The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers. William James

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… despite the fact that the poor are indispensable to the rich

• The poor are the human manure in which grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which the rich reap. Octave Mirbeau
• You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich. Henry Ward Beecher

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No-one likes to criticise the poor more than the rich

• Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor. Herman Melville
• Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well- fed. Herman Melville

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Thankfully, that is changing

• The greatest step forward in human evolution was made when society began to help the weak and the poor, instead of oppressing and despising them. Maria Montessori

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The poor buy liabilities while the rich buy assets

• If you want to be rich, simply spend your life buying assets. If you want to be poor or middle class, spend your life buying liabilities. It’s not knowing the difference that causes most of the financial struggle in the real world. Robert Kiyosaki
• The rich buy assets. The poor only have expenses. The middle class buys liabilities they think are assets. Robert Kiyosaki
• Rich people acquire assets. Poor and middle class acquire liabilities, but they think they are assets. Robert Kiyosaki

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The poor spend while the rich invest

• Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich. T. Harv Eker
• Rich people invest money and poor people spend it. Grant Cardone

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More differences between the rich and the poor

• If you shoot for the stars, you’ll at least hit the moon. Poor people don’t even shoot for the ceiling in their house, and then they wonder why they’re not successful. T. Harv Eker
• Rich people buy luxuries last, while the poor and middle class tend to buy luxuries first. Robert Kiyosaki

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Debt will make you poor

• Debt is the worst poverty. Thomas Fuller

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Pretending to be rich will make you poor

• Just pretending to be rich keeps some people poor. Monsieur Marc
• Thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought of as poor. Robert Mallett

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Idleness will make you poor

• Idle chatter leads only to poverty. Proverbs 14:23b
• Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. Benjamin Franklin
• Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth. Proverbs 10:4
• There is a working class – strong and happy – among both rich and poor: there is an idle class – weak, wicked, and miserable – among both rich and poor.  John Ruskin
• Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him. Benjamin Franklin

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Ignorance will make you poor

• Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance. Lyndon B. Johnson
• Ignorance

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Having a poverty mentality will make you poor

• Both poverty and riches are the result of a state of mind, and this change in thinking must happen before anything else happens. Brian Tracy
• Broke is a temporary condition, poor is a state of mind. Sir Richard Francis Burton
• It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor. Edmund Spenser
• Rich is he who thinks he is rich and poor is he who thinks he is poor. Emile Coué
• Prosperity is a way of living and thinking, and not just money or things. Poverty is a way of living and thinking, and not just a lack of money or things. Eric Butterworth
• You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace. Frank McCourt
• The inner speech, your thoughts, can cause you to be rich or poor, loved or unloved, happy or unhappy, attractive or unattractive, powerful or weak. Ralph Charell
• The cause of poverty is not scarcity. It is fear and small thinking. Alan Cohen
• Prosperity consciousness

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Concentrating on poverty will make you poor

• Concentrate on poverty and you will be poor. James Van Fleet
• Have you noticed that those who speak most about illness have it, those that speak most about money have it, those that speak about poverty have it … that must be their experiences. What ever you focus on will come to you. Abraham-Hicks
• Thoughts of fear and poverty, and all negative thoughts serve as stimuli to your subconscious mind, unless you master these impulses and give it more desirable food upon which it may feed. Napoleon Hill

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Embrace voluntary poverty by living a simple and frugal life …

• As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. Henry David Thoreau
• However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage.  Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.  Things do not change, we change.  Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.  Henry David Thoreau
• I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money. Pablo Picasso
• If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. Annie Dillard Creek
• The intention of voluntary simplicity is not to dogmatically live with less. It’s a more demanding intention of living with balance. This is a middle way that moves between the extremes of poverty and indulgence. Duane Elgin
• None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Henry David Thoreau
• Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. Michael Harrington
• In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness. Alan Watts
• He is now rising from affluence to poverty. Mark Twain
• Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor. Samuel Johnson
• Simple living,  Frugality

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… a life of putting first things first …

• A simple life is not seeing how little we can get by with—that’s poverty—but how efficiently we can put first things first. . . . When you’re clear about your purpose and your priorities, you can painlessly discard whatever does not support these, whether it’s clutter in your cabinets or commitments on your calendar.  Victoria Moran
• I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life. Anatole France
• Poverty keeps the vision pure. Robert Leighton
• Put first things first

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… a life free not possessed by an excess of material things ..

• Truly, whoever possesses little is that much less possessed: praised be a little poverty! Friedrich Nietzsche

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… a life of appreciating the simple things …

• Poverty is to happiness what appetite is to food–poverty enables us to enjoy the simplest pleasures; appetite, the simplest fare. Charles Edward Jerningham

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… a life of living simply so that others may simply live

• 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
• We, who have so much, must do more to help those in need. And most of all, we must live simply, so that others may simply live. Ed Begley, Jr.
• If one had taken what is necessary to cover one’s needs and had left the rest to those who are in need, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need. Saint Basil
• Simple living

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Having enough is preferable to extreme poverty or great wealth

• Wealth is not of necessity a curse, nor poverty a blessing. Wholesome and easy abundance is better than either extreme; better for our manhood that we have enough for daily comfort, enough for culture, for hospitality, for charity. More than this may or may not be a blessing. Certainly, it can be a blessing only by being accepted as a trust. Roswell D. Hitchcock
• The community which has neither poverty nor riches will always have the noblest principles. Plato
• Give me, Lord, neither poverty nor riches. William Cobbett
• The two poorest men in the world are buckled together at the opposite sides of the circle. The man who has so much money that he does not know what to do with it and the man who has no money at all touch each other, as you will find; and one is about as poor as the other. Henry Ward Beecher
• The best condition in life is not to be so rich as to be envied nor so poor as to be damned. Josh Billings

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By reducing desires and nurturing contentment, all but the very poor can become rich

• If being wealthy is taken to mean having the means to satisfy one’s every want, all but the very poor can become rich as thou at a single stroke of a magician’s wand, simply by ceasing to want more than is really necessary for sustaining life. By being content with little and not giving a rap for what the neighbours think, one can attain a very large measure of freedom, shedding care and worry in a trice. John Blofeld
• Poor and content is rich, and rich enough. William Shakespeare
• By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich. Democritus
• The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires. Seneca
• Desire

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Life itself, without the right ingredients, can be a kind of poverty

• If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty. Rainer Maria Rilke

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Life without beauty, mystery or truth is a kind of poverty

• A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. Lewis Mumford
• I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language. Muriel Barbery
• Beauty

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Life without pause is a kind of poverty

• A poor life this if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. William Henry Davies
• Busyness

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Life without memories is a kind of poverty

• A man’s real possession is his memory. In nothing else is he rich, in nothing else is he poor.  Alexander Smith
• Memory

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Life without inner peace is spiritual poverty

• Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred.  For it is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering. Paramahansa Yogananda
• Better poverty without care, than riches with. Aesop
• Inner peace

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Life without attention or awareness is a kind of poverty

• A greater poverty than that caused by lack of money is the poverty of unawareness. Men and women go about the world unaware of the beauty, the goodness, and the glories in it. Their souls are poor.  It is better to have a poor pocketbook than to suffer from a poor soul.  Jerry Fleishman
• I’m so poor I can’t even pay attention. Ron Kittle
• Attention,  Awareness

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Life is poverty when we allow wealth to be its master

• If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed. Edmund Burke
• Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential. Barack Obama

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Life without something to believe in or aspire to is a kind of poverty

• He who does not believe has no soul. He is empty. He has no ideals. He has nothing to live for. He has no sunshine, no light. No joy in life. He is a poor, poor man.   Robert Ley
• The poor man is not he who is without a cent, but he who is without a dream. Harry Kemp
• Purpose,  Meaning

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A life that knows neither victory or defeat is a kind of poverty

• Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. Teddy Roosevelt
• Victory,  Defeat

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Life without generosity and sharing is a kind of poverty

• We are rich only through what we give; and poor only through what we refuse and keep. Anne Swetchine
• No one has ever become poor by giving. Anne Frank
• Generosity,  Sharing

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Even the poorest have something to give

• He who praises another enriches himself far more than he does the one praised. To praise is an investment in happiness. The poorest human being has something to give that the richest could not buy. George M. Adams
• No man is so poor as to have nothing worth giving: as well might the mountain streamlets say they have nothing to give the sea because they are not rivers. Give what you have. To someone it may be better than you dare to think. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• No one has ever become poor by giving. Anne Frank
• Giving

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Life without contentment is poverty, even for the rich

• Content makes poor men rich; discontentment makes rich men poor. Benjamin Franklin
• Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty. Socrates
• It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. Seneca
• Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty. Doris Day
• Contentment

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Life that doesn’t recognise its blessings is a kind of poverty

• Not to understand a treasure’s worth till time has stole away the slighted good, is cause of half the poverty we feel, and makes the world the wilderness it is. William Cowper
• Appreciation

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Excessive desire makes even rich men poor

• He who desires is always poor. Claudianus
• It is not poverty which produces sorrow, but desire. Epictetus
• It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. Seneca
• The true way to gain much, is never to desire to gain too much. He is not rich that possesses much, but he that covets no more; and he is not poor that enjoys little, but he that wants too much. Francis Beaumont
• Desire

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Avarice and greed is a poverty of the spirit

• A poor spirit is poorer than a poor purse. A very few pounds a year would ease a man of the scandal of avarice. Swift
• Avarice is always poor, but poor by her own fault. Johnson
• Avarice is as destitute of what it has, as poverty of what it has not. Publilius Syrus
• Poverty wants much; but avarice, everything. Publilius Syrus
• Where poverty ceases, avarice begins. Honore De Balzac
• Greed,  Avarice

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The inability to feel is a kind of poverty

• No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. Henry Ward Beecher
• The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel… its poverty by how little. Serrilyn Kenyon
• Emotion

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Life without love is a kind of poverty

• The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. Mother Teresa
• Love

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Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the worst kind of poverty

• Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa
• Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self. May Sarton
• The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved. Mother Teresa
• Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. Mother Teresa
• Loneliness

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To live without trees is a kind of poverty

• To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• Trees

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Living poor to die rich is a terrible waste of life

• He begins to accumulate treasure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as an end. He lives poor, to die rich; and is the mere jailer of his house, and the turnkey of his wealth. Impoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison it in his chest, than his brothers slave to liberate it from the mine. Charles Caleb Colton
• Learn to live a life of honest poverty, if you must, and turn to more important matters than transporting gold to your grave. Credenda
• Live rich, don’t die rich

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Health is wealth to both rich and poor

• The poorest person would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all his or her money for health. C. Colton
• Wealth

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To be rich in family and friends is great wealth to both rich and poor

• I don’t care how poor a man is; if he has family, he’s rich. Dan Wilcox
• To be rich in friends is to be poor in nothing. Lilian Whiting
• 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

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To be rich in love is to be poor is great wealth to both rich and poor

• It is in the heart that the values lie. I wish I could make him understand that a loving heart is riches, and riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.   Mark Twain
• Who, being loved, is poor? Oscar Wilde

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Hope is the poor man’s wealth

• A poor man with nothing in his belly needs hope, illusion, more than bread. Georges Bernanos
• Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable.  Samuel Johnson
• Hope is the poor man’s bread. Gary Herbert
• Let my body dwell in poverty, and my hands be as the hands of the toiler; but let my soul be as a temple of remembrance where the treasures of knowledge enter and the inner sanctuary is hope. George Eliot
• Hope

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Ability is the poor man’s wealth

• Ability is a poor man’s wealth. John Woode
• Talent

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Sleep is the poor man’s wealth

• Come Sleep! Oh Sleep, the certain knot of peace, the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, the poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release, the indifferent judge between the high and low. Sir Philip Sidney
• Sleep

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To be able to laugh even in poverty is a kind of wealth

• A man isn’t poor if he can still laugh. Raymond Hitchcoc
• You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it. Bill Cosby
• Laughter

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• “You’re broke, he?” I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.  Raymond Chandler
• A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money. C. Fields
• Acquaintance: A degree of friendship called ‘slight’ when its object is poor and ‘intimate’ when he is rich or famous.
• Antiques: Furniture that is too old for poor folks but the right age for rich people.
• Cash: A poor man’s credit card
• Desertion: A poor man’s divorce.  Arthur Hayes
• Foreign aid: Taxing poor people in rich countries for the benefit of rich people in poor countries.  (Bernard Rosenberg)
• He found it inconvenient to be poor. William Cowper
• I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty. Groucho Marx
• I’m so poor I can’t even pay attention. Ron Kittle
• Life insurance is a wonderful scheme, whereby you can live in poverty all your life in order to be very rich after you die.
• Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache. Mae West
• Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. Woody Allen
• Money is just the poor man’s credit card. Marshall McLuhan
• more (humour)
• Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. Oscar Ameringer
• Poverty: a temporary financial low, curable by money. Stephen Richards
• The only bird that gives the poor a real tumble is the stork. Wilson Mizner
• They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody? Princess Diana

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