Quotes about poor
page 20

“My cry could only waken him. And what
a poor gift: I, confined to my own form,
when I used to be a birch, a lizard
shedding times and satin skins
in many shimmering hues.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"I Am Too Close..."
Poems New and Collected (1998), Salt (1962)

Time, Cry

“Every day I talk with the enemy. But I do not see an embodiment of "him who opposes goodness." If we approach the war on terrorism with the fervor of a Christian jihad against Islam, our battle is already lost, for we have become what we opposed and we are now the fundamentalists. Our battle is not one of flesh and blood, but against the spiritual powers and principalities which rule this present darkness. We cannot allow ourselves to be caught up in "war mode" against a fleshly enemy, or the true enemy is already within us, and we have failed to believe in the power of a redemption which (we say) we believe has saved us. … My comfort and liberty must not be won by the sacrifices of a new and foreign poor now paying the price for our moral failings of diplomacy,. economy and statesmanship, turning our Republic into an Empire.”

Joshua Casteel (1979–2012) US Army soldier, lecturer, and writer

Source: Letters from Abu Ghraib (2008), pp. 71-72.

War

“Let us not despair; it is a blessed cause, and success, ere long, will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory; we have obtained, for these poor creatures, the recognition of their human nature, which, for a while was most shamefully denied. This is the first fruits of our efforts; let us persevere and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Speech before the House of Commons (18 April 1791).

History, Nature, Effort, Suffering

“It was a part of a budget which even three months had proved to be a mass of miscalculation; it was the pet scheme of a cosmopolitan school who love England little, and whom England loves less, whose sympathies are half-American and half-French; and it was the first application of a theory of combined taxation and reform, according to which the poor were exclusively to fix the revenue which the rich were exclusively to pay.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

‘The Conservative Reaction’, The Quarterly Review, vol. 108 (July & October 1860), p. 276
1860s

Love, School, Parting

“It is right to be forward in the defence of the poor; no system that is not just as between rich and poor can hope to survive.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech at Edinburgh (24 November 1882), from in G. Cecil, The Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury. Volume III, p. 65
1880s

Hope

“One should view the present situation – the status quo – as being maintained by certain conditions or forces. A culture – for instance, the food habits of a certain group at a given time – is not a static affair but a live process like a river which moves but still keeps to a recognizable form…Food habits do not occur in empty space. They are part and parcel of the daily rhythm of being awake and asleep; of being alone and in a group; of earning a living and playing; of being a member of a town, a family, a social class, a religious group... in a district with good groceries and restaurants or in an area of poor and irregular food supply. Somehow all these factors affect food habits at any given time. They determine the food habits of a group every day anew just as the amount of water supply and the nature of the river bed determine the ﬂow of the river, its constancy or change.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1943) "Psychological ecology". In: D. Cartwright (Ed.) Field Theory in Social Science. London: Social Science Paperbacks. As cited in: Bernard Burnes (2004) " Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change: A Re-appraisal https://blackboard.le.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/institution/College%20of%20Social%20Science/School%20of%20Management/DL%20Materials/MBA/2.%20Organizational%20Behaviour/Section%208/Burnes.pdf" in: Journal of Management Studies. Vol 41. Nr 6. p. 977-1002. 1940s

Family, Food, Nature, Water

“Wherever democracy has prevailed, the power of the State has been used in some form or other to plunder the well-to-do classes for the benefit of the poor.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 107, 1860, p. 524
1860s

Democracy

“His drinke, the running streame, his cup, the bare
Of his palme cloasde, his bed, the hard cold ground:
To this poore life was Misery ybound.”

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (1536–1608) English politician and poet

Source: The Induction (1563), Line 264, p. 320

Life, Drink

“The shame is compounded by the failure of developed countries to commit enough of their wealth and resources to helping poor populations from developing countries.”

Laisenia Qarase (1941) Prime Minister of Fiji

Excerpts from a speech to the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific, 13 May 2005

Failure, Help, Country, Wealth

“What we really long for after death is to go on living this life, this same mortal life, but without its ills without its tedium, and without death. Seneca, the Spaniard, gave expression to this in his Consolatio ad Marciam… And what but that is the meaning of that comic conception of the eternal recurrence which issued from the tragic soul of poor Nietzsche, hungering for concrete and temporal immortality?”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis

Life, Death, Hunger, Soul

“He reacts to many things bitterly, this pleasant, smiling young man, who is 32 years old, married now, with two sons, a sports hero here and back home in Puerto Rico. Clemente reacts to things bitterly because he is an honest man, and a feeling one. Baseball has become a game of automatons performing in mechanical ways. Scoreboards now tell you when to cheer. The words "Go-go-go" light up, and you obediently recite, "Go-go-go." A bugle sounds, and reflexively you murmur, "Charge!" Roberto Clemente is a throwback, as are many of his Latin cohorts—which means he has his flaws. Anger can twist him almost helpless with rage. But it has also made him not only a leader of men—automatons are poor leaders—but also a spokesman for his people. He spoke out, during 1966, in an Associated Press dispatch of August 23…”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Roberto Clemente: A Flame in Pittsburgh," in Baseball Stars of 1967 (April 1967), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 51
Other Topics

Men, People, Smile, Way

“The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

As quoted in The Quotable Politician (2003) by William B. Whitman, p. 30.

“But the room seemed so poor, pleading for warmth and joy. Vera Rivken's room. She had been nice to Arturo Bandini, and she was poor. I took the small roll from my pocket, peeled off two one dollar bills, and laid them on the table. Then I walked down the stairs, my lungs full of air, elated, my muscles so much stronger than ever before.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Joy

“If you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich.”

John Green (1977) American author and vlogger

The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEVqeaFHsHE YouTube

“We can safely abandon the doctrine of the eighties, namely that the rich were not working because they had too little money, the poor because they had much.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Guardian [UK] (20 November 1991)

Money

“Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love, Art, Light, Science

“Even then, though, I cared about people, not theories. I had no wish to spin individual cases into some grandiose, ideologically driven legal theory. I no longer believed in utopian solutions, or the cynical politicians who used them to sucker voters, claiming to care about the poor while actually exploiting them. Not only was I sure that such solutions were doomed to failure, but I also feared that once they failed, the resulting disillusionment would make matters even worse. Yet it was taken for granted in the seventies that the purveyors of these elaborate nostrums were doing the right thing, and anyone who dared to challenge their effectiveness was hooted down. That prospect intimidated me, especially when it came to racial matters.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Page 115
2000s, (2008)

People, Fear, Failure

“And I dream in the morning that she brings me water
And I dream in the evening that she brings me wine
Just a poor man's daughter from Puerta Piñasco
South of the border, in old Mexico.”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

"Evangelina" on Fearless (1976) · Stage performance by Axton http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O53wg24FAT0

Dreams, Water, Wine, Daughters

“God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened Magic never fled…”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Beautiful Losers (1966)

Men, God

“Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.”

John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1648–1721) English poet and notable Tory politician of the late Stuart period

Essay on Poetry (published 1723).

Books, Appearance, Reading

“When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

In the perl man page.
Documentation

“People who speak Belarusian can not do anything except talk on it, because it is impossible to express anything great in Belarusian. The Belarusian language is a poor language. There are only two great languages in the world. Russian and English.”

Alexander Lukashenko (1954) President of Belarus since 20 July 1994

As quoted in Топ-10 самых скандальных и оскорбительных высказываний Лукашенко http://europeanbelarus.org/be/news/2012/2/24/3941/ // Civil campaign European Belarus, europeanbelarus.org (in Russian)

People, World

“Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of “speculation”; but which ought to be called Gambling.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Letter 2.
Advice to Young Men (1829)

Evil

“The rights of the poor majority are pure air and pure water, and sufficient space to walk about in, when the rich minority are befouling the air with manufactories, poisoning the rivers, and as in the neighborhood of Foots Cray and St. Mary's, adding "field to field, till there be no place" left, and the villagers cannot step out of the dusty high-road without a trespass..”

Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker

Letter to the Rev. J.P. Wright (1879), from The Life and letters of Samuel Palmer, Painter and Etcher (AH Palmer, London, 1892)

Water

“It may be supposed that I led a miserable life but I did not I was very far indeed from being miserable at this time when my wife came home at night, we had always something to talk about, we were pleased to see each other, our reliance on each other was great indeed, we were poor, but we were young, active cheerful and although my wife at times doubted that we would get on in the world, I had no such misgivings.”

Francis Place (1771–1854) English social reformer

Source: The Autobiography of Francis Place: 1771-1854, 1972, p. 7; Cited in: Jeremy Wickins. " An Overview of Francis Place's Life, 1771-1854 http://www.historyhome.co.uk/people/place2.htm," historyhome.co.uk, last edited 12 january 2016.

Life, World, Home, Time

“I started out with $600, a second hand Volkswagen, and a wife. One was an asset and one was a liability. I will let you figure out which was which. I liquidated both, and still had the $600. I worked long hours, and spent weekends reading about markets. I simply love it. You have to love what you do, whether it be gardening, hairdressing, etc. When you love it, then the money follows. Even if it doesn’t, you will still be happy. Being happy and poor is better than being unhappy and poor.”

Jim Rogers (1942) American writer

Interview, February 2005

Love, Money, Happiness, Reading

“So without an original or helpful thought in my head, I just sat for some minutes and watched these poor disconnected people shuffle past. Then I did what most white Australians do. I read my newspaper and drank my coffee and didn't see them anymore.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

In a Sunburned Country (US), Down Under (UK) (2000)

People, Coffee, Reading, Past

“Jesus Christ was born in a stable; He was obliged to fly into Egypt; thirty years of His life were spent in a workshop; He suffered hunger, thirst, and weariness; He was poor, despised, and miserable; He taught the doctrines of heaven, and no one would listen. The great and the wise persecuted and took Him, subjected Him to frightful torments, treated Him as a slave, and put Him to death between two malefactors, having preferred to give liberty to a robber, rather than to suffer Him to escape. Such was the life which our Lord chose; while we are horrified at any kind of humiliation, and cannot bear the slightest appearance of contempt.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 60.

Life, Death, Hunger, Suffering

“The last business of Christ's life was the saving of a poor penitent thief.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 73.

Life, Business, Christ

“Bernard Shaw says that as long as men torture and slay animals and eat their flesh we shall have war. I think all sane, thinking people must be of his opinion. The children of my school were all vegetarians, and grew strong and beautiful on a vegetable and fruit diet. Sometimes during the war when I heard the cries of the wounded I thought of the cries of the animals in the slaughterhouse, and I felt that, as we torture these poor defenceless creatures, so the gods torture us. Who loves this horrible thing called war? Probably the meat-eaters, having killed, feel the need to kill—kill birds, animals—the tender stricken deer—hunt foxes. The butcher with his bloody apron incites bloodshed, murder. Why not? From cutting the throat of a young calf to cutting the throat of our brothers and sisters is but a step. While we are ourselves the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

My Life (1927), chapter 28; Liveright Publishing, 2013, p. 276 https://books.google.it/books?id=7bmj03oQH9IC&pg=PA276.

Love, Men, God, War

“The poor are thought to be dangerous, either morally dangerous because they are unproductive social parasites - thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts, and the like - or potentially dangerous because they are disorganized, unpredicatble, and tendentially reactionary. In fact the term lumpenproletariat (or rad proletariat) has functioned for times to demonize the poor as a whole. … The industrial reserve army is a constant threat hanging over the heads of the existing working class because, first of all, its misery serves as a terrifying example to workers of what could happen to them, and, second, the excess supply of labor it represents lowes the costs of labor and undermines workers' power against employers (by serving potentially as strike breakers, for example).”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

130
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Time

“Poor Gauguin, 'way off there on his island! I'll wager he spends most of his time thinking of Rue Lafitte. I advised him to go to New Orleans, but he decided it was too civilized. He had to have people around him with flowers on their heads and rings in their noses before he could feel at home. Now if I should leave my house for more than two days…”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"The Crime and the Punishment" (p. 48)
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

People, Way, Feeling, Home

“[Final lines] mother, mother, save your unhappy son! Let a tear fall on his aching head! See how they torture him! Press the poor orphan to your bosom! He has no rest in this world; they hunt him from place to place.

Mother, mother, have pity on your sick child! And do you know that the Bey of Algiers has a wart under his nose?”

Nikolai Gogol book Diary of a Madman

Diary of a Madman (1835)

World, Tear

“Whatever good deeds have been done by me, those the people accept and those they follow. Therefore they have progressed and will continue to progress by being respectful to mother and father, respectful to elders, by courtesy to the aged and proper behavior towards Brahmans and ascetics, towards the poor and distressed, and even towards servants and employees.”

Ashoka (-304–-232 BC) Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty

Edicts of Ashoka (c. 257 BC)

People, Age, Behavior

“Poor people always pay back their loans. It's us, the creators of institutions and rules, who keep creating trouble for them.”

Muhammad Yunus (1940) Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Grameen Bank II: Designed to Open New Possibilities (2002)

People

“What a miserable thing it is to be poor.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes book Elsie Venner

Elsie Venner (1859)

“If large classes of the population live under conditions which make it difficult if not impossible for them to keep a home together in decent comfort, if the children are habitually underfed, if the housewife is habitually overstrained, if the bread-winner is under-employed or under-paid, if all are unprotected and uninsured against the common hazards of modern industrial life, if sickness, accident, infirmity, or old age, or unchecked intemperance, or any other curse or affliction, break up the home, as they break up thousands of homes, and scatter the family, as they scatter thousands of families in our land, it is not merely the waste of earning-power or the dispersal of a few poor sticks of furniture, it is the stamina, the virtue, safety, and honour of the British race that are being squandered.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 147
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, Children, Age, Family

“They make poor observations, because they choose among the results of their experiments only what suits their object, neglecting whatever is unrelated to it and carefully setting aside everything which might tend toward the idea they wish to combat.”

Claude Bernard (1813–1878) French physiologist

Introduction à l'Étude de la Médecine Expérimentale (1865)

Idea

“Not only may particular decisions made according to rules result in material injustice, but a rule may systematically discriminate against the poor and the oppressed. In such circumstances, to be committed to applying the rules, however fairly or impartially administered, come what may, is to ignore the more obvious and direct demands of justice and human welfare.”

Tom Campbell (philosopher)

The Left and Rights (Routledge: 1983), p. 18 http://books.google.com/books?id=9kPnuG9ufDgC&pg=RA1-PT18

Justice, Decision

“Protocols:
these coppers for its own need without additional interest.
So long as loans were internal the Goyim only shuffled their money from the pockets of the poor to those of the rich, but when we brought up the necessary person in order to transfer the loans into the external sphere, all the wealth of States flowed into out cash boxes….
We shall so hedge about our system of accounting that neither the ruler nor the most insignificant public servant will be in a position to divery even the smallest sum from its destination without detection or to direct it in another direction except that which will be once fixed in a definite plan of action.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Money, Personality, Wealth, Box

“Poor, dear, silly Spring, preparing her annual surprise!”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Journal entry (4 March 1906); as published in Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens (1977) edited by Holly Stevens, Ch. 8

Spring

“Most people in the world are poor. If we knew the economy of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matter. Most of the world's poor people earn their living in agriculture. If we knew the economics of agriculture, we would know much of the economic of being poor.”

Theodore Schultz (1902–1998) American economist

"The Economics of Being Poor," (1979)

People, World

“I must say, the Japanese soldiers came across as fairly stupid. Many of their actions made no sense. They really believed, like Hitler's Nazis, that they were a superior race, and that it was their sacred duty to uplift the poor, colonized Asians and to liberate them!”

Robert Kuok (1923) Malaysian businessman

Cap 3 "Under the Japanese Heel"

Stupidity, Sense

“Raymond Passworthy: But… we're such little creatures. Poor humanity's so fragile, so weak. Little… little animals.”

H. G. Wells book The Shape of Things to Come

Things to Come (1936)

Animals

“By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man—
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

XI. 489–492 (tr. Robert Fagles); Achilles' ghost to Odysseus.
Alexander Pope's translation:
: Rather I'd choose laboriously to bear
A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air,
A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread,
Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead.
With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground. P. S. Worsley's translation:
: Rather would I, in the sun's warmth divine,
Serve a poor churl who drags his days in grief,
Than the whole lordship of the dead were mine.
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

God, Dead

“It's the rich and powerful, by and large, who glamorize immorality, but it's the poor and vulnerable who pay the price.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2016, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

“The interviewer Stina Dabrowski said to Thatcher: "So when people criticise you and say what it led to the period when you were prime minister was that the rich became richer and the poor and the became poorer." Thatcher replied "That is not correct. The poor also became less poor, because the benefits at the bottom for those who are genuinely poor do go up. Money spend on education goes up and on the Health Service goes up so that is not true. What happens you might get a bigger gap but you might start here creates a small gap particularly if you're paying top tax today - 83% on earnings and income and 98% on savings. Your gap goes up, it does go up, but the whole thing moves up the gap, you must give people incentive!”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Quoted from an interview with Stina Dabrowski. Margaret Thatcher on rising to power, and resigning from it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_gnhy7eT1s (1995) Post-Prime Ministerial

Money, People, Health, Education

“Acosta: What the President is proposing here does not sound like it's in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. The says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It doesn't say anything about speaking English or being a computer programmer. Aren't you trying to change what it means to an immigrant coming into this country if you're telling them you have to speak English? Can't people learn to speak English when they get here?
Miller: Well, first of all, right now it's a requirement to be you have to speak English, so the notion that speaking English wouldn't be a part of the immigration system would actually be very ahistorical. Secondly, I don't want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world, it's a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you're referring to was added later, is not actually part of the original Statue of Liberty.”

Stephen Miller (1985) political advisor for policy

2010s

People, World, History, Light

“I have never observed that the religious are more eager to die than the rest of us poor mortals.”

H. Rider Haggard book The Ancient Allan

The Ancient Allan (1920), CHAPTER I, OLD FRIEND

“One morn I awakened, a new sun was shining,
The sky was a kingdom, all covered in blood.
The moon and the stars, where the troops that lay conquered,
Like food left to wither, poor spirital food.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), New Morning

Food, Star, Sun

“Private courier companies are fine to handle the lucrative parts of the [postal] business. But they have little interest in servicing remote communities, so these areas get poor or non-existent service. Similarly, leaving health care and education to the private marketplace will result in fine services for the affluent but leave many others without access to decent services (or in some cases any services at all). While this kind of deficiency is bad enough when it comes to postal delivery, it becomes downright serious in areas like health care and education.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

Health, Education, Communication, Business

“This poor amphibious Pope too gives loaves to the Poor; has in him more good latent than he is himself aware of. His poor Jesuits, in the late Italian Cholera, were, with a few German Doctors, the only creatures whom dastard terror had not driven mad: they descended fearless into all gulfs and bedlams; watched over the pillow of the dying, with help, with counsel and hope; shone as luminous fixed stars, when all else had gone out in chaotic night: honour to them!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Hope, Star, Help, Madness

“If it could be shown that the great Trust magnate or the great Aristocratic landowner, apart from the advantages of his inherited wealth, was a more highly developed species of humanity than the poor struggling sempstress or the unemployed docker, then there might be some justification for allowing the docker and the sempstress as the representatives of a weaker class to die out in order to enable the more highly developed creature to survive; but one moment's reflection will show that the alleged superiority of the landowner or the Trust magnate rests on one fact alone, namely, that he owns certain material possessions, usually inherited, which enable him to dictate the terms upon which his less fortunate fellow creatures shall be permitted to live.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), pp. 4-5

Wealth

“To treat a poor wretch with a bottle of Burgundy, and fill his snuff-box, is like giving a pair of laced ruffles to a man that has never a shirt on his back.”

Thomas Brown (1662–1704) English translator and writer of satire

Laconics, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt", Sorbienne (1610–1670); also used in Oliver Goldsmith, The Haunch of Venison. Source: Brown, Thomas, 1663-1704. Laconics, Or, New Maxims of State And Conversation: Relating to the Affairs And Manners of the Present Times : In Three Parts. London: Printed for Thomas Hodgson ..., 1701. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015013771368?urlappend=%3Bseq=117

Box

“The economy is doing fine—if you gauge it in traditional ways. The growth of GDP is 6.2%, which is good. […] But do we compare Russia to developed countries or to a country like China that has the GDP growth of 9%—or oil producers like Azerbaijan with 12%, or Kazakhstan with 19%. This way, we see that Russia's achievement is more than modest. Under oil windfall profits, Russia's GDP should have grown by 15% to 16% in 2005. Once you dismiss the windfall profits, you see a poor quality of the economic policy that has proven negative to the tune of losing some 9% to 10% of the GDP growth.”

Andrey Illarionov (1961) Russian politician

About the real picture in the Russian economy around 2005.
"Q&A: Putin's Critical Adviser," 2005

Way, Gauge, Country

“I am a beggar for the poor. Serving humanity is the biggest Jihad.”

Abdul Sattar Edhi (1928–2016) Pakistani philanthropist, social activist, ascetic and humanitarian

as quoted by Chris Brummitt of AP, in NBC News ( August 29, 2010 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/38903962/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/t/aging-philanthropist-pakistans-mother-teresa/#.V4_oBvskrcs/). Retrieved on July 21, 2016

“The great question for our time is, how to make sure that the continuing scientific revolution brings benefits to everybody rather than widening the gap between rich and poor. To lift up poor countries, and poor people in rich countries, from poverty, to give them a chance of a decent life, technology is not enough. Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

Progress In Religion (2000)

Life, People, Question, Chance

“I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the representative of our country; he is a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy. The turkey is a much more respectable bird.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

letter to Sarah Bache (26 January 1784).
Epistles

Men, Bird, Country

“Religion? Yes, I know it well; I've heard its prayers and creeds,
And seen men put them all to shame with poor, half-hearted deeds.
They follow Christ, but far away; they wander and they doubt.
I'll serve him in a better way, and live his precepts out.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Another Chance.

Men, Religion, Way, Heart

“Thousands — millions and billions — of animals are killed for food. That is very sad. We human beings can live without meat, especially in our modern world. We have a great variety of vegetables and other supplementary foods, so we have the capacity and the responsibility to save billions of lives. I have seen many individuals and groups promoting animal rights and following a vegetarian diet. This is excellent. Certain killing is purely a "luxury." … But perhaps the saddest is factory farming. The poor animals there really suffer. I once visited a poultry farm in Japan where they keep 200,000 hens for two years just for their eggs. During those two years, they are prisoners. Then after two years, when they are no longer productive, the hens are sold. That is really shocking, really sad. We must support those who are attempting to reduce that kind of unfair treatment. An Indian friend told me that his young daughter has been arguing with him that it is better to serve one cow to ten people than to serve chicken or other small animals, since more lives would be involved. In the Indian tradition, beef is always avoided, but I think there is some logic to her argument. Shrimp, for example, are very small. For one plate, many lives must be sacrificed. To me, this is not at all delicious. I find it really awful, and I think it is better to avoid these things. If your body needs meat, it may be better to eat bigger animals. Eventually you may be able to eliminate the need for meat. I think that our basic nature as human beings is to be vegetarian — making every effort not to harm other living beings. If we apply our intelligence, we can create a sound, nutritional program. It is very dangerous to ignore the suffering of any sentient being.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Interview in Worlds in Harmony: Dialogues on Compassionate Action, Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992, pp. 20-21.

People, World, Sadness, Food

“we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations.*12 But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong30.html#dd12 Book IV, Chapter V”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Essay on the Principle of Population (1798; rev. through 1826)

Men, People, Disease, Nature

“If a model itself is “a poor representation of reality,” they write, “determining the sensitivity of an individual parameter in the model is a meaningless pursuit.””

Orrin H. Pilkey (1934) American ecologist

Cornelia Dean, " The Problems in Modeling Nature, With Its Unruly Natural Tendencies http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/science/20book.html?_r=1&em&ex=1172034000&en=66b1bbb4657b7f9d&ei=5087%0A&oref=slogin", The New York Times (February 20, 2007). Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future (2007)

Reality

“With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black, and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious, and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

Speech in the U.S. Senate https://web.archive.org/web/20070123074414/http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.667/pub_detail.asp (12 August 1849) 1840s

“You see us poor Englishmen searching hard for the solution of a problem when there isn't one. You may think that the Irish want certain definite reforms, and that they will be happy and contented the day they get them; but not at all. What amuses them is discussion itself, plotting in theory. They play with the idea of Home Rule; if we gave it them, the game would be finished and they would invent another, probably a more dangerous one.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Happiness, Home, Search, Game

“I have to say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Ministers are like fraudsters in the fairy tale, telling gullible Liberal Democrat MPs about the beautiful progressive clothes that the emperor is wearing, if only they are clever enough and loyal enough to see them. And desperately, we have Liberal Democrats clinging to shreds of invisible cloth, reaching deep into their Liberal and Conservative history to pretend that they can be progressive now. They are claiming that Keynes might have backed the Budget. They are calling on Beveridge for support, kidding themselves that they can call on their history and that they are following in the footsteps of great liberal Conservatives like Winston Churchill, who supported the minimum wage, but the truth is that the emperor has no clothes.
The truth is that if you look at the detail, the Budget is nastier than any brought in by Margaret Thatcher. Instead of Churchill, Keynes or the founders of the welfare state, the Liberal Democrats have signed up, with the Right Honourable Member for Chingford and his Chancellor, to cut support for the poor. It is perhaps apt that in this week of World Cup disappointments, it was actually a footballer who got it right. In 2002, after England were defeated in the World Cup by Brazil, Gareth Southgate reflected ruefully on England's performance and said:
"We were expecting Winston Churchill and instead got Iain Duncan Smith."
That is the reality for the Liberal Democrats now. With all their high hopes, they have betrayed the poor and the vulnerable, whom they stood up to defend.
[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb) rose]
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman because I know he has a history of supporting people on low incomes and I do not know why he is betraying it now.”

Yvette Cooper (1969) British politician

During a budget response debate http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100628/debtext/100628-0012.htm, 28 July, 2010. Link to the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtORBuxY0MU.

People, Truth, World, Beauty

“Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

To Sir Edward Dyer, as quoted in Apophthegms (1625) by Francis Bacon

Men, Anger

“…what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brainslack brain workers, nor heartsick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realisation at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Why I Am A Socialist (1884).

Men

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Third State of the Union Address

Country

“The difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that the Democrats let the poor be corrupt, too.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

Oscar Levant, as quoted in "Oscar the Magnificent" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/161384355/

“America needs to be a place where all of us can feel a part of the American dream. But it will not happen by dividing us into racial groups. It will not happen by trying to turn the poor against the rich. It will not happen by asking Americans to accept what is immoral and wrong in the name of tolerance.”

J. C. Watts (1957) American politician

Delivering the Republican Party response to President Bill Clinton's "State of the Union" Address (1997-02-04)

Dreams, Feeling, Parting

“For the government of the temporary magistrates of a democracy, or even the laws themselves may be as tyrannical as the maxims of the most despotic monarchy, and the administration of the government may be as destructive of private happiness. The only consolation that a democracy suggests in those circumstances is, that every member of the state has a chance of arriving at a share in the chief magistracy, and consequently of playing the tyrant in his turn; and as there is no government in the world so perfectly democratical, as that every member of the state, without exception, has a right of being admitted into the administration, great numbers will be in the same condition as if they had lived under the most absolute monarchy; and this is, in fact, almost universally the case with the poor, in all governments.”

Joseph Priestley book Essay on the First Principles of Government

Section III, "Of Civil Liberty"
Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771)

Happiness, World, Law, Democracy

“what is called the flexibility of the labor market means that no job is secure. There is no longer a clear division but rather a large gray area in which all workers hover precariously between employment and unemployment. Second there is no "reserve" in the sense that no labor power is outside the process of social production. The poor, the unemployed, and the underemployed in our societies are in fact active in social production even when they do not have a waged position.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

131
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Sense

“My neighbor's poverty makes me feel poor; my own does not.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

La pobreza ajena me basta para sentirme pobre; la mía no me basta.
Voces (1943)

Feeling

“Complexity scientists concluded that there are just too many factors—both concordant and contrarian—to understand. And with so many potential gaps in information, almost nobody can see the whole picture. Complex systems have severe limits, not only to predictability but also to measurability. Some complexity theorists argue that modelling, while useful for thinking and for studying the complexities of the world, is a particularly poor tool for predicting what will happen.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 226

World, Understanding, Thinking, Study

“The making of a true Home is really our peculiar and inalienable right; a right which no man can take from us, for a man can no more make a Home than a drone can make a hive. He can build a castle or a palace, but, poor creature! be he wise as Solomon and rich as Croesus, he cannot turn into a Home. No masculine mortal can do that. It is a woman, and only a woman; a woman all by herself if she likes, and without any man to help her, who can turn a House into a Home.”

Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and leading suffragette

Lecture IV, pp. 114-115
The Duties of Women (1881)

Home, Help, Housing

“He is and will be an advocate only for the poor.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

Il n'est et ne sera que l'avocat des pauvres.
1786
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 73, 27082 2892-7]
On Maximilien de Robespierre

“Thomas Friedman dismissed the protesters in Quebec City as members of the "Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor." …The Coalition to Keep Poor People Poor might as well disband; its apparent goal is being accomplished in spades by pro-market forces. If the prospects of the world's poor improving their lot is one that supposedly upsets anti-capitalist protestors, they can confidently put their gas masks and get back to the shopping mall - global capitalism can be trusted to keep the poor in check without any help.”

Linda McQuaig (1951) journalist and author

All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism (2001)

People, World, Confidence, Help

“Preaching the gospel is not easy in a church defined by the denominational interests of status-seeking clergy and laypersons. Doing Christian theology is difficult in a seminary or university determined by the academic interests of privileged professors and students. Speaking the truth can be politically dangerous in a society defined according to the socio-economic interests of the rich. Preaching the gospel, doing Christian theology, and speaking the truth are interrelated, and neither can be correctly understood apart from the liberation struggles of the poor and marginalized.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. v

Truth, Universe

“I will not pursue trickle-down economics, but will implement bottom-up economics aimed at getting the poor out of poverty into prosperity.”

Peter Mutharika (1940) President of Malawi

After being sworn in to office as president http://www.nyasatimes.com/2014/05/31/so-help-me-god-mutharika-sworn-in-as-malawi-president-chilima-vp/ (May 31 2014)

“This kingdom Christ promised will be both a physical and spiritual kingdom. Only those who are ‘poor in spirit’ will inherit the kingdom (Matt. 5:3).”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 64

Christ

“I heard one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek speak on the rich young ruler text that Rich (Mullins) had talked about in Wheaton's chapel. The teaching pastor had said, "now this doesn't mean you have to go sell your rollerblades and golf clubs," and he went on to "contextualize" the teaching to show that we just need to be careful not to make idols of our things. I wasn't so sure about that. Jesus doesn't tell the man to be a better steward, or to treat his workers fairly, or not to make money an idol. He tells this highly educated and devoutly religious young man that he lacks one thing: giving up everything he owns to give the poor.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution (2006), p. 103

Money, Education

“She's a rich girl,
She don't try to hide it,
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes,
He's a poor boy,
Empty as a pocket,
Empty as a pocket with nothing to lose,
Sing ta-na-na, ta-na-na-na,
She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes
Song lyrics, Graceland (1986)

Shoe, Girl, Boy, Singing

“Luxury
Employ'd a Million of the Poor,
And odious Pride a Million more;
Envy it self, and Vanity,
Were Ministers of Industry;
Their darling Folly, Fickleness,
In Diet, Furniture and Dress,
That strange ridic'lous Vice, was made
The very Wheel that turn'd the Trade.”

Bernard Mandeville book The Fable of the Bees

"The Grumbling Hive", line 180, p. 10
The Fable of the Bees (1714)

Envy

“Politics is too often regarded as a poor relation, inherently dependent and subsidiary; it is rarely praised as something with a life and character of its own.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 1, The Nature Of Political Rule, p. 15.

Life, Dependency

“The really frightening risk of war was neglect, filth, poor organization, defective medical services, and hygenic ignorance, which conditions (as in the troops) practically everybody.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Source: The Age of Revolution (1962), Chapter 4, War

War

“The ‘false precision’ of which Maynard Keynes accused his economist critics is with us still. Worse: we have smuggled in a misleadingly ‘ethical’ vocabulary to bolster our economic arguments, furnishing us with a self-satisfied gloss upon crassly utilitarian calculations. When imposing welfare cuts on the poor, for example, legislators in the UK and US alike have taken a singular pride in the ‘hard choices’ they have had to make.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 1 : The Way We Live Now

Falseness

“The poor are becoming increasingly aware of the injustice of the system that condemns them to a life of indigence and misery. And they are opposing the system courageously, sometimes even violently. This leads to a situation of conflict.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2007) World Peace: An Impossible Dream? , Mumbai: St Pauls
On Peace

Life, Courage

“When you do what the poor weary dove did — when you just betake yourself to the one only ark for safety, the infinite Love will put forth His hand, and draw you in! Into union with Christ! Into renewing grace and supporting strength! Into peace! Oh! wondrous peace; oh! sweet, satisfying peace; oh! peace of God that passeth understanding!”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 151.

Love, God, Peace, Understanding

“To me, there is no doctrine so infinitely absurd as the idea that this life is a probationary state—that the few moments spent here decide the fate of a human soul forever. Nothing can be conceived more merciless, more unjust. I am doing all I can to destroy that doctrine. I want, if possible, to get the shadow of hell from the human heart. Why has any life been a failure here? If God is a being of infinite wisdom and kindness, why does he make failures? What excuse has infinite wisdom for peopling the world with savages? Why should one feel grateful to God for having made him with a poor, weak and diseased brain; for having allowed him to be the heir of consumption, of scrofula, or of insanity? Why should one thank God, who lived and died a slave”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"To the Indianapolis Clergy." The Iconoclast (Indianapolis, IN) (1883)

Life, Wisdom, God, Fate

“A thousand years a poor man watched
Before the gate of Paradise:
But while one little nap he snatched,
It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?”

William R. Alger (1822–1905) American clergyman and poet

"Swift Opportunity", p. 281.
Poetry of the Orient, 1893 edition

“Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Pauvre et libre plutôt que riche et asservi. Bien entendu les hommes veulent être et riches et libres et c’est ce qui les conduit quelquefois à être pauvres et esclaves.
Notebooks (1942–1951)

Men, Time

“The poor yield to the rich, the common people to the upper ten, the servants to their masters, the ignorant to the scholars; but there is nobody who does not imagine that he is really better than others.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Page 32.
Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life (1551)

People, Imagination

“This Coercion Act professes to be in the main an Act directed against conspiracy, and conspiracy is a bad thing. But under the name of conspiracy we say that it is directed against combination. Combination is not always a very good thing, but combination is very often the sole means by which the weak can protect themselves against the strong, the poor against the wealthy.”

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

Speech in London (30 June 1888), quoted in The Times (2 July 1888), p. 7.
1880s

Strong

“In general dictators have not done better at [economic] policies than democrats—far from it. Most dictators have ravaged their countries for personal gain. Scholars have asked whether democracy helps or hurts the economic growth of poor countries and despite many surveys, have come to no conclusive answer.”

Adam Przeworski (1940) Polish-American academic

Source: Fareed Zakaria (2007) The Future of Freedom. p. 251

Democracy, Help, Hurt, Personality

“The order owes nothing to the housing needs of the British people. It is not designed to do so. It is just another example of the Tory Government slaughtering the housing needs and hopes of millions of people on the altar of the market economy, with all its gobbledegook about market forces and who will set and pay rents. I shall not say that this is a landlord's charter; it is worse than that. It is a profiteering landlord's charter. The rent officer will no longer be an independent objective person who ensures that a fair rent once fixed is adhered to and to whom one can appeal if a landlord tries to increase such a rent. People, particularly in London, will be harassed out of protected tenancies by con merchants and thrown on to the streets so that the private rented sector, the free market, can allow the level of rent to rise to its natural level—the highest that can be obtained…The effect of their deregulation has been to force up private sector rents, to have people thrown out on the streets, and there will be greater homelessness and profiteering by landlords…Most of those people who tonight are sleeping on the streets around Waterloo station, the National Theatre and along the South Bank, who are begging at the main stations of this city, who are sleeping over the grilles of tube stations on Charing Cross road, not long ago had somewhere to live. Those people are the victims of market forces, the victims of what this Government are doing and believe should be done to poor people, who cannot afford the landlords' rent.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/21/rent-officers in the House of Commons (21 March 1989). 1980s

People, Hope, Nature, Sleep

“Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science… One need only open the eyes to see that the conquests of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice.
As Mach says, these devotees have spared their successors the trouble of thinking.”

Henri Poincaré book The Value of Science

Author's Essay Prefatory to the Translation: "The Choice of Facts," p.4
The Value of Science (1905)

Men, Thinking, Light, Science

“It is not only the gulf between religions and cultures that plaques us today. There is the widening gulf between the rich and the poor, the world of plenty and the world of famine. We may think we can make a good patch work or mechanical arrangement to ameliorate such a division. But this I feel is an illusion. There is no economic solution to the ills of the world until the arts of originality - arts that are driven by mysterious strangeness - open the partialities and bias of tradition in ways that address the very core of our pre-possessions.”

Wilson Harris (1921–2018) Guyanese writer

pg. 251.
The Unfinished Genesis of the Imagination (1999)

World, Religion, Art, Way

“[Referring to private hospital funding alone:] That won't work, it will never be enough, good health care costs a lot of money, remembering 'the distant parts of this province' in which 'assistance cannot be procured, but at an expense that neither [the sick-poor] nor their townships can afford.' … '[This] seems essential to the true spirit of Christianity, and should be extended to all in general, whether deserving or undeserving, as far as our power reaches.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

In 1751, Franklin's friend, Dr. Thomas Bond, convinced him to champion the building of a public hospital. Through his hard work and political ingenuity, Franklin brought the skeptical legislature to the table, bargaining his way to use public money to build what would become Pennsylvania Hospital. Franklin proposed an institution that would provide — 'free of charge' —the finest health care to everybody, 'whether inhabitants of the province or strangers,' even to the 'poor diseased foreigners"' (referring to the immigrants of German stock that the colonials tended to disparage and discriminate). Countering the Assembly's insistence that the hospital be built only with private donations, Franklin made the above statement. Various articles by Franklin supporting his Appeal for the Hospital in The Pennsylvania Gazette (1751) as quoted in Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan.

Money, Health, Distant, Parting

“Christmas turns things last end foremost. The people whom the world arranges last in its procession — the weary, the poor, the foolish, the lame, the halt, the blind — these are the ones who come at the very head of the column in the consideration of the Little Child who leads.”

Halford E. Luccock (1885–1960) American Methodist minister

Source: Fares, Please! (1915), Everything Upside Down, p. 187
Context: Christmas turns things last end foremost. The people whom the world arranges last in its procession — the weary, the poor, the foolish, the lame, the halt, the blind — these are the ones who come at the very head of the column in the consideration of the Little Child who leads. The last, the least, the lost — how often those words were on Jesus's lips — the three great objects of his passion! It is not the world's idea of correct form. … most of us unconsciously arrange our acquaintances or possible acquaintances in the order of what advantage they may be to us. Jesus reverses the whole scheme as a perversion and sets up a new basis of classification. His question is not, What can this man do for me? but What can I do for him? The most important person for us to know, he tells us both by word and example, is the one who needs us most. "The first shall be last and the last shall be first."

People, World, Christmas

“There is something beautiful about virtue, Captain. But I am just a poor guy.”

Georg Büchner (1813–1837) German dramatist and writer of poetry and prose

Scene VI.
Woyzeck (1879)

Beauty, Guy

Quotes about poor page 20

Quotes about poor
page 20