Quotes about poor
page 13

Jane Roberts photo
Aaron Copland photo
Sigmund Freud photo

“The poor ego has a still harder time of it; it has to serve three harsh masters, and it has to do its best to reconcile the claims and demands of all three… The three tyrants are the external world, the superego, and the id.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

The Anatomy of the Mental Personality (Lecture 31)
1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Théodore Guérin photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“Give your goods to the poor: Christ.
Property is theft - as long as it's not mine: Marx.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Verteile Dein Gut an die Armen: Christus.
Eigentum ist Diebstahl – solange es nicht mir gehört: Marx.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Michael Moorcock photo
Julian of Norwich photo
William Congreve photo

“Ah! Whither, whither shall I fly,
A poor unhappy Maid;
To hopeless Love and Misery
By my own Heart betray’d?”

William Congreve (1670–1729) British writer

Incognita: Or, Love and Duty Reconcil'd (1692)

Stokely Carmichael photo
Douglas Coupland photo
John Donne photo

“Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 48, preached upon the Day of St. Paul's Conversion, January 25, 1629
LXXX Sermons (1640)

George Herbert photo

“My meaning (dear Mother) is in these sonnets, to declare my resolution to be, that my poor abilities in poetry, shall be all and ever consecrated to God's glory.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Letter to His Mother (1609)

Friedrich Engels photo
Michelle Obama photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo

“In 1834 the Government…did themselves high honour by the new Poor Law Act, which rescued the English peasantry from the total loss of their independence.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

'Early Parliamentary Life 1832–52. 1833–4 in the old House of Commons' (3 June 1897), quoted in John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (eds.), The Prime Minister's Papers: W. E. Gladstone. I: Autobiographica (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971), p. 55.
1890s

Oswald Spengler photo

“And at that point, too, in Buddhist India as in Babylon, in Rome as in our own cities, a man's choice of the woman who is to be, not mother of his children as amongst peasants and primitives, but his own "companion for life", becomes a problem of mentalities. The Ibsen marriage appears, the "higher spiritual affinity" in which both parties are "free"—free, that is, as intelligences, free from the plantlike urge of the blood to continue itself, and it becomes possible for a Shaw to say "that unless Woman repudiates her womanliness, her duty to her husband, to her children, to society, to the law, and to everyone but herself, she cannot emancipate herself." The primary woman, the peasant woman, is mother. The whole vocation towards which she has yearned from childhood is included in that one word. But now emerges the Ibsen woman, the comrade, the heroine of a whole megalopolitan literature from Northern drama to Parisian novel. Instead of children, she has soul-conflicts; marriage is a craft-art for the achievement of "mutual understanding"….
At this level all Civilizations enter upon a stage, which lasts for centuries, of appalling depopulation. The whole pyramid of cultural man vanishes. It crumbles from the summit, first the world-cities, then the provincial forms, and finally the land itself, whose best blood has incontinently poured into the towns, merely to bolster them up awhile. At the last, only the primitive blood remains, alive, but robbed of its strongest and most promising elements. This residue is the Fellah type.
If anything has demonstrated the fact that Causality has nothing to do with history, it is the familiar "decline" of the Classical, which accomplished itself long before the irruption of Germanic migrants. The Imperium enjoyed the completest peace; it was rich and highly developed; it was well organized; and it possessed in its emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius a series of rulers such as the Caesarism of no other Civilization can show. And yet the population dwindled, quickly and wholesale. The desperate marriage-and-children laws of Augustus—amongst them the Lex de maritandis ordinibus, which dismayed Roman society more than the destruction of Varus's legions—the wholesale adoptions, the incessant plantation of soldiers of barbarian origin to fill the depleted country-side, the immense food-charities of Nerva and Trajan for the children of poor parents—nothing availed to check the process.”

Vol. II, Alfred A. Knopf, 1928, pp. 104–06 https://archive.org/stream/Decline-Of-The-West-Oswald-Spengler/Decline_Of_The_West#page/n573/mode/2up/search/depopulation
The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)

John Constable photo
Hollow Horn Bear photo
Arnold J. Toynbee photo
Alex Jones photo

“If I'm in, you know, especially in a poor area, and I see guys walking like they're thugs down the street, I don't care what color they are, I go "That guy looks like they're a thug, and looks like they're tough, okay… If they try to shake me down I'm gonna ignore them and keep walking, and if they come up to me and try to put a hand on me, I'm gonna punch 'em right in the throat. 'Cause I don't wanna jump on top on of 'em and hurt my knees and stuff, when I slam their head in the ground. Plus, I don't wanna kill 'em. 'Cause then I'd have to go to jail and stuff, and they'd have to find that it was done in self defense. Been down that road." So, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, "Alright. I'm gonna punch this guy in the throat." I'm thinking how hard am I gonna punch him. And I'm not thinking he's a black guy. I'm thinking the guy's walking like a thug, thinks they're tough, and I'm thinking about how I'm going to defend myself. Just like when I've been at the Coast, a few years ago, and walk out of a restaurant in South Padre and they're having a biker rally—and it wasn't like a nice biker rally, most rallies are nice people—it was like thug wannabes, rode up with a motorcycle…and were looking at me, and I was thinking "Okay. Alright. That guy is taking his helmet off. I'm gonna punch him in the throat the minute he tries to get up and do something, and then I'm gonna assault those next three guys. Then they'll probably pull a weapon. I need to take that." I mean, that's what I'm thinking whenever something like that is going on. I can't help it. I'm thinking, "Alright, I'm ready to kill." That's just how I am. And I'm thinking, "Alright. Okay. Instantly assess these guys. These are probably ex-con, real criminals. I've got my three kids here. That gives me, you know, just turbo dinosaur power. And I'm thinking, "Control yourself. Don't have a fight, unless you absolutely got to."”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

You know, the man in me is ready to take all on! and... you know what I'm talking about, don't you? ARGH, you scum! I hate gang members and filth! And it has nothing to do with black people. But I will stump your head in if you start a fight with me, you thug scum! Anyways, excuse me ladies and gentlemen.
"Alex Jones Self-Defense Rant" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIMJ_pxy2eU, July 2013.
2013

Patrick Buchanan photo
George Chapman photo
Mohamed Nasheed photo
John Keats photo
Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch photo

“Better send in one good picture than a lot of poor ones, but then that good one must be so good that it almost walks out of the frame and becomes a portion of nature itself.”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

as quoted by E. C. Cady, in 'The Art of Johannes Hendrick Weissenbruch' https://ia801702.us.archive.org/33/items/jstor-25540452/25540452.pdf, in 'Brush and Pencil, Volume 12', April 1904, p. 51

John Bartholomew Gough photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“I love all people, rich or poor, but in those particular positions I just don't want a poor person.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2017, June

Bill Clinton photo
Fausto Cercignani photo

“Unlike money, hope is all: for the rich as well as for the poor.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Zell Miller photo

“Maybe the Lord's word is decisive on that: The poor are always with us. You know, you'll never run out of people, you can help.”

Chuck Feeney (1931) American businessman

Secret Billionaire: The Chuck Feeney Story http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/learning/video-secret-billionaire-chuck-feeney-story

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse photo
Andrew Dickson White photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Eddie Izzard photo
Roger Ebert photo
William James photo

“Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill's existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological anesthesia as regards Jill's magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill's palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he also is afflicted with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack's way of taking it - so importantly - is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! Where would any of us be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"What Makes a Life Significant?"
1910s, Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)

Henry David Thoreau photo

“She with one breath attunes the spheres,
And also my poor human heart.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Inspiration, Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900

Joan Maragall photo

“Think deeply about this: what are you going to ask of Christ when you are in his Church? You come stepping in softly, seeking quiet under her vaulted roofs (unless, of course, you come out of mere vanity) in order to forget your problems and preoccupations [-] languidly immersing yourself in the majesty of the sacred chorales and in the aromatic clouds of incense: and then to sleep[-] But this is not the peace of Christ. My peace I give you, my peace I leave you. He said My, which is not the peace of this world. But you want to establish the Church in the peace of the world, and that is why the others, when they come, cannot enter without war cries rising from their overwrought lungs. They rebel, filling the temple with blashemous roars, they eject the terrified faithful, who had been half asleep, they insult or kill the ministers at the altar, knock over the altar itself, smash the stone saints, burn the church [-] so it is that she once again becomes, for them, the church of the Christ that died on the cross. [-] This time, do not leave her rebuilding to others. Do not wish to put up sturdier walls for these will not give her a better defense [-] Nor should you ask the rich to contribute too much money for the reconstruction, lest the poor, should receive the benefice with mistrust. Let it be the poor who rebuild her, for then they will do so according to their fashion and only in this way will they love her.”

Joan Maragall (1860–1911) Spanish writer
Stanley Hauerwas photo
Berthe Morisot photo

“These last days [of Manet, dying] were very painful. Poor Edouard suffered atrociously. His agony was horrible, death in one of its most appealing forms, that I once again witnessed at a very close range. If you add to these almost physical emotions my old bond of friendship with Edouard, a entire past of youth and work suddenly ending, you will know that I am devastated.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

in a letter to her sister Edma, April 1883; as quoted in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, with her family and friends Denish Rouart - newly introduced by Kathleen Adler and Tamer Garb; Camden Press London 198, p. 131
1881 - 1895

Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia photo
Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet photo
Beatrice Kaufman photo

“I've been poor and I've been rich. Rich is better!”

Beatrice Kaufman (1895–1945) American writer and playwright

Leonard Lyons' column, The Washington Post, May 12, 1937. Quoted in the Yale Book of Quotations, and The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/01/poor-rich/

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Jim Webb photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“It’s a poor atom blaster that won’t point both ways.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 18
The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)

Nathanael Greene photo
Menno Simons photo
Bouck White photo

“The major enemy of poker players is their rationalizations for their failures to think…. Many poor players evade thinking by letting their minds sink into irrational fogs. Their belief in luck short-circuits their minds by excusing them from their responsibility to think. Belief in luck is a great mystical rationalization for the refusal to think.”

Frank R. Wallace (1932–2006) Philosopher, author, entrepreneur

Wallace, Frank R. Poker: A Guaranteed Income for Life by Using the Advanced Concepts of Poker. Quoted in A Friendly Game of Poker by Ira Glass and Jake Austen, Chicago Review Press, 2003, page 210

Charles Krauthammer photo
Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford photo

“The awful phantom of the hungry poor.”

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (1835–1921) American author

A Winter’s Night (sonnet).

Theodore Schultz photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Charlemagne photo

“Fathers and guardians, bishops of our Church, you ought to minister to the poor, or rather to Christ in them, and not to seek after vanities. But now you act quite contrary to this; and are vainglorious and avaricious beyond all other men.”

Charlemagne (748–814) King of the Franks, King of Italy, and Holy Roman Emperor

Quoted in Notker's The Deeds of Charlemagne (translated 2008 by David Ganz)

R. Venkataraman photo

“The people of India may be poor, many of them may be illiterate, but few societies in the world can match the Indian people in the confidence and maturity with which they exercise their democratic rights.”

R. Venkataraman (1910–2009) seventh Vice-President of India and the 8th President of India

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.184.

Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Thomas Gray photo

“Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune,
He had not the method of making a fortune.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

On His Own Character http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=skoc (1761)

David Attenborough photo
Joseph Heller photo
Keshub Chunder Sen photo

“I was also pained to notice an institution which I certainly did not expect to find in this country – I mean caste. Your rich people are really Brahmins, and your poor people are Sudras.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech at Hannover Square Rooms on the occasion of a Soiree held to bid him farewell on 12th September 1870.

Peter Tatchell photo
Wilt Chamberlain photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“When Machiavelli came to the end of his life, he had a vision shortly before giving up the ghost. He saw a small company of poor scoundrels, all in rags, ill-favoured, famished, and, in short, in as bad plight as possible. He was told that these were the inhabitants of paradise, of whom it is written, Beati pauperes, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum.. After this, he was asked to which of the groups he would choose to belong; he answered that he would much rather be in Hell with those great geniuses, to converse with them about affairs of state, than be condemned to the company of the verminous scoundrels that he had first been shown.”

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Italian politician, Writer and Author

This account of Machiavelli's """"Dream"""" was not published until a century after his death, in Etienne Binet's Du salut d'Origene (1629).
There is an earlier but more oblique reference in a letter written by Giovambattista Busini in 1549: """"Upon falling ill, [Machiavelli] took his usual pills and, becoming weaker as the illness grew worse, told his famous dream to Filippo [Strozzi], Francesco del Nero, Iacopo Nardi and others, and then reluctantly died, telling jokes to the last."""".
The """"Dream"""" is commonly condensed into a more pithy form, such as """"I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles"""".
Disputed

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Horace photo

“O Fortune, cruellest of heavenly powers,
Why make such game of this poor life of ours?”

Heu, Fortuna, quis est crudelior in nos Te deus? Ut semper gaudes illudere rebus Humanis!

Book II, satire viii, line 61 (trans. Conington)
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)

Tony Abbott photo

“The poor will always be with us.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "Bible bashing the homeless, Abbott style "in response to whether a government under his direction would continue with the Rudd government's goal of halving homelessness by 2020" http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/bible-bashing-the-homeless-abbott-style-20100215-o2tj.html?comments=105 in the Brisbane Times, June 30, 2010.
2010

Olaudah Equiano photo

“Soon after this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished for my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. This indeed was often the case with myself.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. II
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

John Banville photo
Johannes Tauler photo

“"Most so-called liberated people that I know are full of it," remarked a caustic, albeit articulate, businessman attending a seminar I gave on emerging male/female relationships. "The feminist leadership is a good example. They have the worst qualities of both men and women. They have all the answers and nothing you can say ever changes their mind. Then, from what I read, one turns on and attacks the other—supposedly for ideological reasons, but it's just a variation on the old-fashioned male ritual of ego-tripping—'I'm for real, you're not—I'm the greatest, you're nothing.'"It's a real cast of characters, these feminist leaders," he continued. "There's the glamor queen one who's trying to be a movie star without copping to what she's doing. It's obvious, though. She's always being seen with celebrities and she's always dating the richest, most successful guys. Then there's the other one who's like a Jewish mother—complaining and telling everybody how to change, and how to live. I'm surprised she doesn't try and tell us what to eat."I looked through their magazine recently. It's full of the same kind of ads as the other women's magazines that Ms. supposedly abhors. You know, jewelry, deodorants, perfumes—and the articles are mainly old-fashioned victim variety stuff, an updated variation on the old "poor downtrodden women" theme."The 'liberated' guys they hold up as shining examples of what men should behave like are just as phony as the feminist women pretending to be so pure. They're workaholics, and they're the worst kind of arrogant—because God is on their side and unless you imitate them, you're a misguided pig. It feels like being at a church social when you watch them—at least as hypocritical, if not more so—because at least church types don't pretend to be open to discussing their beliefs. They're out front in thinking that they have all the answers."When what's-her-name ran for vice-president and lost, what did she do—she blamed the male establishment. God save us from female leadership! They can't stop blaming—even at that level. I thought of reminding her that this country has at least ten million more women than men and the odds were totally on her side and it was women who rejected her, and saw through her act; but I know better than to argue against that stuff with facts."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Earth Mothers in Disguise, p. 149
The Inner Male (1987)

Martin Amis photo
George Herbert photo

“[ Much money makes a countrey poor, for it sets a dearer price on every thing. ]”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Edward Young photo

“Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour.”

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night I, Line 67.

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“Affirmative action, rightly understood, would justify a wide variety of outreach programs for those whose lives have been stultified by poverty, broken families, bad schools, and neighborhoods filled with drugs, crime and gangs. One can heartily commend a program for tutoring young blacks, or young whites, who had never had a genuine teacher in a real classroom. One cannot, however, commend a program of raising the grades of young blacks, but not young whites, without having raised their skills. And what possible justification can there be there for giving scholarship assistance to the child of a black middle-class family, while denying it to a poor white? Can one imagine a more crass disregard for the genuine meaning of the Equal Protection Clause? The priests of this new religion of 'affirmative action' are not without material interests. Hundreds of millions of corporate dollars are spent annually on 'sensitivity training'. Within the universities, centers for black, brown and women's (i. e., feminist) studies are being established, with vast amount of patronage bestowed upon them. Traditional courses in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare and the Bible continue to appear in the catalogs, but they are increasingly taught by 'deconstructionists', who have no interest in the texts, but only in subjective reactions to the texts.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

“There are difficult choices to be made that have important social and environmental consequences. You have to protect the elderly and the poor.”

Brian Souter (1954) British businessman

As quoted on the CityAM Web Site http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/the-father-the-uk’s-transport-business-sees-recovery-the-way (26th July 2010 )

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
S.M. Stirling photo
Barry Boehm photo

“Poor management can increase software costs more rapidly than any other factor. Particularly on large projects, each of the following mismanagement actions has often been responsible for doubling software development costs.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Barry Boehm (1981) as cited in: Tyson Gill (2002) Planning Smarter: Creating Blueprint-Quality Software Specifications. p. 14

Ture Nerman photo
Adam Roberts photo
John Stuart Mill photo
Laurence Sterne photo

“Go poor Devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee? — This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.”

Book II, Ch. 12 (Uncle Toby to the fly).
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

“Whoever can feel, the love I do tell,
Would take by the heel, poor sinners from hell;
As downward they're going, to bring them above;
To sing of Christ's dying, a Heaven of love.”

Dorothy Ripley (1767–1832) missionary

A Hymn From My Nativity (22 August 1819), p. 18
The Bank of Faith and Works United (1819)

Henry David Thoreau photo
Joachim of Fiore photo

“Altars are trimmed, and the poor suffer the bitter pangs of hunger.”

Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202) Italian abbot

in Man on His Own (1970), p. 120