“The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)
Quoted without reference to earlier source, time or location in A Just Peace through Transformation: Cultural, Economic, and Political Foundations for Change (1988) by the International Peace Association
Disputed
“The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright
Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)
“…Poverty and violence are not God made, they are man made. Poverty and peace cannot coexist.”
Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)
Discussion with Ela Bhatt, Founder, Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA)
George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author
International Herald Tribune (7 May 1990)
1990s
Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist
1990s, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1993)
Context: Together, we join two distinguished South Africans, the late Chief Albert Lutuli and His Grace Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to whose seminal contributions to the peaceful struggle against the evil system of apartheid you paid well-deserved tribute by awarding them the Nobel Peace Prize. It will not be presumptuous of us if we also add, among our predecessors, the name of another outstanding Nobel Peace Prize winner, the late Rev Martin Luther King Jr. He, too, grappled with and died in the effort to make a contribution to the just solution of the same great issues of the day which we have had to face as South Africans. We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.
“Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.”
Stendhal (1783–1842) French writer
Fragments
De L'Amour (On Love) (1822)
“She had the best kind of courage, or maybe the worst kind, the kind that gets you into trouble.”
Alistair MacLean (1922–1987) Scottish novelist
Source: Fear is the Key
“Sitting and waiting for something to happen was the worst kind of torture.”
Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer
Source: Sweethearts
“Indifferentism is the worst kind of disease that can affect people.”
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…
Political Science for Civil Services Main Examination (2010)