Quotes about poverty

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Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Political Ideas in the Twentieth Century (1950)

Force and Signification
Writing and Difference (1978)

Inagural Speech at the 25th National Convention of the Bharat Krishak Samaj, Hyderabad, 15 February 1988. Transcript at [Selected Speeches and Writings: 1 January 1988-31 December 1988, 1989, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 180


Source: Quote, Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhid in Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi, 2009, Concept Publishing Company, 978-81-8069-587-2, 25, https://books.google.com/books?id=L5bTCgLM1lYC&pg=PT25

In:p.36
Narcopolis

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo, we shall boldly challenge unjust mores, and thereby speed up the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the rough places shall be made plain, and the crooked places straight. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together."

Progress and Poverty (1879)
Context: There is, and always has been, a widespread belief among the more comfortable classes that the poverty and suffering of the masses are due to their lack of industry, frugality, and intelligence. This belief, which at once soothes the sense of responsibility and flatters by its suggestion of superiority, is probably even more prevalent in countries like the United States, where all men are politically equal, and where, owing to the newness of society, the differentiation into classes has been of individuals rather than of families, than it is in older countries, where the lines of separation have been longer, and are more sharply, drawn. It is but natural for those who can trace their own better circumstances to the superior industry and frugality that gave them a start, and the superior intelligence that enabled them to take advantage of every opportunity, to imagine that those who remain poor do so simply from lack of these qualities.
But whoever has grasped the laws of the distribution of wealth, as in previous chapters they have been traced out, will see the mistake in this notion. The fallacy is similar to that which would be involved in the assertion that every one of a number of competitors might win a race. That any one might is true; that every one might is impossible.
For, as soon as land acquires a value, wages, as we have seen, do not depend upon the real earnings or product of labor, but upon what is left to labor after rent is taken out; and when land is all monopolized, as it is everywhere except in the newest communities, rent must drive wages down to the point at which the poorest paid class will he just able to live and reproduce, and thus wages are forced to a minimum fixed by what is called the standard of comfort — that is, the amount of necessaries and comforts which habit leads the working classes to demand as the lowest on which they will consent to maintain their numbers. This being the case, industry, skill, frugality, and intelligence can avail the individual only in so far as they are superior to the general level just as in a race speed can avail the runner only in so far as it exceeds that of his competitors. If one man work harder, or with superior skill or intelligence than ordinary, he will get ahead; but if the average of industry, skill, or intelligence be brought up to the higher point, the increased intensity of application will secure but the old rate of wages, and he who would get ahead must work harder still.

1984 Budget speech, Quoted on BBC News, "Pranab Mukherjee's chequered career" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-18580133, June 26, 2012.
Context: Belying the prophecies of doom by many a self-styled Cassandra, the economy has emerged stronger as a result of adjustment effort mounted by us...; We have not cut subsidies. We have not cut wages. We have not compromised on planning... We have not faltered in our commitment to anti-poverty programmes... We have come out of it with our heads high.

1960s, Address to Local 815, Teamsters and the Allied Trades Council (1967)
Context: Today Negroes want above all else to abolish poverty in their lives and in the lives of the white poor. This is the heart of their program. To end the humiliation was a start, but to end poverty is a bigger task. It is natural for Negroes to turn to the labor movement because it was the first and pioneer anti-poverty program….

Quotes, Our Larger Tasks (2002)
Context: We must acknowledge that the utter poverty of hundreds of millions of people is not a matter for compassion only, but a threat in the long term to the growth and vigor of the global economic system. We must see it as a part of our charge to help create economic opportunity so that the gap between the richest and poorest does not grow ever wider.

On Fortune; Book III, Ode 29, lines 81–87.
Imitation of Horace (1685)
Context: I can enjoy her while she's kind;
But when she dances in the wind,
And shakes the wings and will not stay,
I puff the prostitute away:
The little or the much she gave is quietly resign'd:
Content with poverty, my soul I arm;
And virtue, though in rags, will keep me warm.

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 7
Context: To be above the poverty line, means no more than to have a sanitary dwelling and sufficient food and clothing to keep the body in working order. It is precisely the same standard that a man would demand for his horses or slaves. Treating man merely as the "repository of a certain sort of labor power," it makes possible the utilization of that power to the fullest extent. No one will fail to realize how low such a standard is. It does not necessarily include any of the intellectual, aesthetic, moral, or social necessities; it is a purely physical standard...

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.

Letter 52 http://books.google.com/books?id=1GZRAAAAcAAJ&q=%22negotiatorem+clericum%22+%22inope+divitem+ex%22+gloriosum+%22quandam+pestem+fuge%22&pg=PA248#v=onepage
Letters

As quoted in "Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi Are Awarded Nobel Peace Prize" by Alan Cowell and Declan Walsh, in The New York Times (10 October 2014) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/11/world/europe/kailash-satyarthi-and-malala-yousafzai-are-awarded-nobel-peace-prize.html?_r=0
Context: Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children … It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.

Roughing It, p. 155
Brother Ray : Ray Charles' Own Story (1978)
Context: 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.
That's how my band made it. We swam through a lot of shit together, we swallowed a lot of pride, but we managed to do what we needed to do.

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Context: In many myths, the one possibility the gods are most anxious about is that humans will discover some secret of immortality or even... attempt to stride the high heavens.... It's a little bit like the rich imposing poverty on the poor and then asking to be loved because of it.

Buffalo Rising interview (2007)
Context: Maybe by doing this work and putting my name on the front line, like a science project, will also afford me the opportunity to embarked into a very special opportunity to show that growing up poor doesn't have to mean being unworthy or forgettable. This is a very important lesson for those who propagate such narrow minded universally accepted inaccuracies about poverty.

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 60
Context: The greatest obstacle that confronted Tolstoy lies rooted deep in the soul of man. It is the fear of poverty and the dread of want which ages of struggle with man and beast and with all the adverse elements of nature has bred in us. Surely history teaches us too well the nature and character of man for us to believe readily that there are many fathers and mothers who would ever consent to become Christians on the conditions set forth by Tolstoy.... who to day would fail to condemn unreservedly any father who would take his babies from a comfortable home to live hungry and shelterless in the forests and fields. From the dawn of the world the chief duty of a parent has been to keep his family secure from want.

In an interview to the World Association of Newspapers for World Press Freedom Day (3 May 2004)
Context: It's an amazing thing to think that ours is the first generation in history that really can end extreme poverty, the kind that means a child dies for lack of food in its belly. That should be seen as the most incredible, historic opportunity but instead it's become a millstone around our necks. We let our own pathetic excuses about how it's "difficult" justify our own inaction. Be honest. We have the science, the technology, and the wealth. What we don't have is the will, and that's not a reason that history will accept.

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 37.
Context: When the “experts” from capitalist countries do not give a racist explanation, they nevertheless confuse the issue by giving as causes of underdevelopment the things which really are consequences. For example, they would argue that Africa is in a state of backwardness as a result of lacking skilled personnel to develop. It is true that because of lack of engineers Africa cannot on its own build more roads, bridges, and hydroelectric stations. But that is not a cause of underdevelopment, except in the sense that causes and effects come together and reinforce each other. The fact of the matter is that the most profound reasons for the economic backwardness of a given African nation are not to be found inside that nation. All that we can find inside are the symptoms of underdevelopment and the secondary factors that make for poverty. Mistaken interpretations of the causes of underdevelopment usually stem either from prejudiced thinking or from the error of believing that one can learn the answers by looking inside the underdeveloped economy. The true explanation lies in seeking out the relationship between Africa and certain developed countries and in recognizing that it is a relationship of exploitation.

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: What economists call over-production is but a production that is above the purchasing power of the worker, who is reduced to poverty by Capital and State. Now, this sort of over-production remains fatally characteristic of the present capitalist production, because — Proudhon has already shown it — workers cannot buy with their salaries what they have produced and at the same time copiously nourish the swarm of idlers who live upon their work.
The very essence of the present economic system is, that the worker can never enjoy the well-being he has produced, and that the number of those who live at his expense will always augment. The more a country is advanced in industry, the more this number grows. Inevitably, industry is directed, and will have to be directed, not towards what is needed to satisfy the needs of all, but towards that which, at a given moment, brings in the greatest temporary profit to a few. Of necessity, the abundance of some will be based on the poverty of others, and the straitened circumstances of the greater number will have to be maintained at all costs, that there may be hands to sell themselves for a part only of that which they are capable of producing; without which, private accumulation of capital is impossible!
These characteristics of our economical system are its very essence. Without them, it cannot exist; for, who would sell his labor power for less than it is capable of bringing in, if he were not forced thereto by the threat of hunger?
And those essential traits of the system are also its most crushing condemnation.

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 26-27
Context: From the facts of distress, as given, and from opinions formed, both as a charity agent and as a Settlement worker, I should not be at all surprised if the number of those in poverty in New York, as well as in other large cities and industrial centers, rarely fell below 25 per cent of all the people.

"The Elderly Lady", in Brodie's Report (1970); tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Context: The poverty of yesterday was less squalid than the poverty we purchase with our industry today. Fortunes were smaller then as well.

Ch. 11 http://historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnbaron11.html
A People's History of the United States (1980)
Context: While some multimillionaires started in poverty, most did not. A study of the origins of 303 textile, railroad and steel executives of the 1870s showed that 90 percent came from middle- or upper-class families. The Horatio Alger stories of "rags to riches" were true for a few men, but mostly a myth, and a useful myth for control.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Two, Part II
Context: The rest of the Crew partook of the same lethargy. Raoul wrote for television, keeping carefully in mind, and complaining bitterly about, all the sponsor-fetishes of that industry. Slab painted in sporadic bursts, referring to himself as a Catatonic Expressionist and his work as “the ultimate in non-communication.” Melvin played the guitar and sang liberal folk songs. The pattern would have been familiar—bohemian, creative, arty—except that it was even further removed from reality, Romanticism in its furthest decadence; being only an exhausted impersonation of poverty, rebellion and artistic “soul.” For it was the unhappy fact that most of them worked for a living and obtained the substance of their conversation from the pages of Time magazine and like publications

Introductory : The Problem
Progress and Poverty (1879)
Context: At the beginning of this marvelous era it was natural to expect, and it was expected, that labor-saving inventions would lighten the toil and improve the condition of the laborer; that the enormous increase in the power of producing wealth would make real poverty a thing of the past. … It is true that disappointment has followed disappointment, and that discovery upon discovery, and invention after invention, have neither lessened the toil of those who most need respite, nor brought plenty to the poor. But there have been so many things to which it seemed this failure could be laid, that up to our time the new faith has hardly weakened. We have better appreciated the difficulties to be overcome; but not the less trusted that the tendency of the times was to overcome them.
Now, however, we are coming into collision with facts which there can be no mistaking. From all parts of the civilized world come complaints of industrial depression; of labor condemned to involuntary idleness; of capital massed and wasting; of pecuniary distress among businessmen; of want and suffering and anxiety among the working classes. All the dull, deadening pain, all the keen, maddening anguish, that to great masses of men are involved in the words "hard times," afflict the world to-day. This state of things, common to communities differing so widely in situation, in political institutions, in fiscal and financial systems, in density of population and in social organization, can hardly be accounted for by local causes.

Act II (Filoro).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 327.
Errori d’Amore
Original: (Et) io daltro non tengo fantasia
Che uscir de servitù, de povertate;
Niuna altra cosa credo al mondo ria.

On Winter Light, Jonas Sima interview <!-- pages 173-174 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: We drove about, looking for churches, my father and I. My father, as you probably know, was a clergyman — he knew all the Uppland churches like the back of his hand. We went to morning services in variouis places and were deeply impressed by the spiritual poverty of these churches, by the lack of any congregation and the miserable spiritual status of the clergy, the poverty of their sermons, and the nonchalance and indifference of the ritual.
In one church, I remember — and I think it has a great deal to do with the end of the film — Father and I were sitting together. My father had already been retired for many years, and was old and frail.... Just before the bell begins to toll, we hear a car outside, a shining Volvo: the clergyman climbs out hurriedly, and there is a faint buzz from the vestry, and then the clergyman appears before he ought to — when the bell stops, that is — and says he feels very poorly and that he's talked to the rector and the rector has said he can use an abbrviated form of the service and drop the part at the altar. So there would be just one psalm and a sermon and another psalm. And goes out. Whereon my father, furious, began hammering on the pew, got to his feet and marched out into the vestry, where a long mumbled conversation ensued; after which the churchwarden also went in, then someone ran up the organ gallery to fetch the organist, after which the churchwarden came out and announced that there would be a complete service after all. My father took the service at the altar, but at the beginning and the end.
In some way I feel the end of the play was influenced by my father's intervention — that at all costs one must do what it is one's duty to do, particularly in spiritual contexts. Even if it can seem meaningless.

The Obedience of A Christian Man (1528)
Context: If God promise riches, the way thereto is poverty. Whom he loveth, him he chasteneth: whom he exalteth, he casteth, down: whom he saveth, he damneth first. He bringeth no man to heaven, except he send him to hell first. If he promise life, he slayeth first: when he buildeth, he casteth all down first. He is no patcher; he cannot build on another man’s foundation.
He will not work until all be past remedy, and brought unto such a case, that men may see, how that his hand, his power, his mercy, his goodness and truth, hath wrought altogether. He will let no man be partaker with him of his praise and glory. His works are wonderful, and contrary unto man’s works.

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

This is a threat to the independence and worth of the human personality, a threat to the meaning of human life.
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, The Threat to Intellectual Freedom
Context: Nothing threatens freedom of the personality and the meaning of life like war, poverty, terror. But there are also indirect and only slightly more remote dangers.
One of these is the stupefaction of man (the "gray mass," to use the cynical term of bourgeois prognosticators) by mass culture with its intentional or commercially motivated lowering of intellectual level and content, with its stress on entertainment or utilitarianism, and with its carefully protective censorship.

About global food economy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU5zT1r5Fk8 Marquette University
Context: When you introduce markets in food, then you introduce two very simple rules. The first rule is this: if you have money you can get the food from wherever around the world. The other rule markets impose is this: if you do not have money, you will starve. This is an important point … The reason why people starve is because of poverty … not because of a shortage of food … but because the only way to access the food is through the market.

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)
Context: Ever since monopoly capital took over the world, it has kept the greater part of humanity in poverty, dividing all the profits among the group of the most powerful countries. The standard of living in those countries is based on the extreme poverty of our countries. To raise the living standards of the underdeveloped nations, therefore, we must fight against imperialism. And each time a country is torn away from the imperialist tree, it is not only a partial battle won against the main enemy but it also contributes to the real weakening of that enemy, and is one more step toward the final victory.

Boston Massacre Oration (1774)
Context: Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves. Remember, my friends, from whom you sprang. Let not a meanness of spirit, unknown to those whom you boast of as your fathers, excite a thought to the dishonor of your mothers I conjure you, by all that is dear, by all that is honorable, by all that is sacred, not only that ye pray, but that ye act; that, if necessary, ye fight, and even die, for the prosperity of our Jerusalem. Break in sunder, with noble disdain, the bonds with which the Philistines have bound you. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed, by the soft arts of luxury and effeminacy, into the pit digged for your destruction. Despise the glare of wealth. That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired, is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue.

Letter 14, 10; Translated by W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis and W.G. Martley. From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1893.) Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001.htm
Letters

Nobel Lecture (12 December 1930)
Context: Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced — there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail. And, much harder to endure than any raging condemnation, a certain number of old acquaintances among journalists, what in the galloping American slang we call the "I Knew Him When Club", have scribbled that since they know me personally, therefore I must be a rather low sort of fellow and certainly no writer. But if I have now and then received such cheering brickbats, still I, who have heaved a good many bricks myself, would be fatuous not to expect a fair number in return.

Jo Cox: Opportunity must knock in a fairer society http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/jo-cox-opportunity-must-knock-in-a-fairer-society-1-6857022 (24 September 2014)
Context: The idea that a child living deep in poverty whose parents don’t have enough money for food or heating, books or basic things like school trips can ever have the same opportunities for development as a more fortunate child is patently absurd. But because it leads to some difficult choices many politicians choose to ignore it, essentially promising to make you an omelette without breaking any eggs.

Budget speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1909/apr/29/final-balance-sheet in the House of Commons (29 April 1909)
Chancellor of the Exchequer
Context: This, Mr. Emmot, is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.

Section 1 : Give Responsibility to Vitally Necessary Work!
Variant translation: Work democracy introduces into liberal thinking a decisive new insight: the working masses who carry the burden of social existence are not conscious of their social responsibility. Nor are they — as the result of thousands of years of suppression of rational thinking, of the natural love function and of the scientific comprehension of living functioning — capable of the responsibility for their own freedom. Another insight contributed by work democracy is the finding that politics is in itself and of necessity unscientific: it is an expression of human helplessness, impoverishment and suppression.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom. The masses of people who work and bear the burden of social existence on their shoulders neither are conscious of their social responsibility nor are they capable of assuming the responsibility for their own freedom. This is the result of the century-long suppression of rational thinking, the natural functions of love, and scientific comprehension of the living. Everything related to the emotional plague in social life can be traced back to this incapacity and lack of consciousness. It is work-democracy's contention that, by its very nature, politics is and has to be unscientific, i. e., that it is an expression of human helplessness, poverty, and suppression.

Source: Poverty (1912), p. v
Context: The evils of poverty are not barren, but procreative, and... the workers in poverty, are in spite of themselves, giving to the world a litter of miserables, whose degeneracy is so stubborn and fixed that reclamation is almost impossible, especially when the only process of reclamation must consist in trying to force the pauper, vagrant, and weakling back into that struggle with poverty which is all of the time defeating stronger and better natures than theirs.

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 74-75
Context: Associated production would be rendered impossible. Profit, rent, and interest would be no more. There would be no diversified division of labor. Cities and industrial communities would dwindle and disappear. Society as a whole would return... to the actual poverty of an agricultural and handicraft age. A community of Indians in America before the invasion of the whites had as much social organization as Tolstoy seems to have felt necessary for mankind. "The Anarchists are right in everything..." he writes, except "only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution." The entire world would be broken into atoms—each an individualist standing alone.

Eat the Rich (1999)

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968)
Context: Millions of people throughout the world are striving to put an end to poverty. They despise oppression, dogmatism, and demagogy (and their more extreme manifestations — racism, fascism, Stalinism, and Maoism). They believe in progress based on the use, under conditions of social justice and intellectual freedom, of all the positive experience accumulated by mankind.

Diary (16 February 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

Source: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2008), Ch. 9, Defying the market, p. 210
Context: Markets have a strong tendency to reinforce the status quo. The free market dictates that countries stick to what they are already good at. Stated bluntly, this means that poor countries are supposed to continue with their current engagement in low-productivity activities. But their engagement in those activities is exactly what makes them poor. If they want to leave poverty behind, they have to defy the market and do the more difficult things that bring them higher incomes—there are no two ways about it.

The Garden, Preface
Context: I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and the study of nature.
And there (with no design beyond my wall) whole and entire to lie, In no unactive ease, and no unglorious poverty.

A Message to Garcia (1899)
Context: Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds — the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there's nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day's wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the "boss" is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets "laid off" nor has to go on a strike for higher wages.

By J. Paul Getty http://www.kelsoinstitute.org/equality.html
Misattributed

On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor http://founding.com/founders-library/american-political-figures/benjamin-franklin/on-the-price-of-corn-and-management-of-the-poor/ (29 November 1766).
Context: I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. 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. There is no country in the world where so many provisions are established for them; so many hospitals to receive them when they are sick or lame, founded and maintained by voluntary charities; so many alms-houses for the aged of both sexes, together with a solemn general law made by the rich to subject their estates to a heavy tax for the support of the poor. Under all these obligations, are our poor modest, humble, and thankful; and do they use their best endeavours to maintain themselves, and lighten our shoulders of this burthen? On the contrary, I affirm that there is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken, and insolent. The day you passed that act, you took away from before their eyes the greatest of all inducements to industry, frugality, and sobriety, by giving them a dependence on somewhat else than a careful accumulation during youth and health, for support in age or sickness. In short, you offered a premium for the encouragement of idleness, and you should not now wonder that it has had its effect in the increase of poverty.

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)
Context: If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion. Thus, the threat of the free exercise of the ballot by the Negro and the white masses alike resulted in the establishment of a segregated society. They segregated southern money from the poor whites; they segregated southern mores from the rich whites; they segregated southern churches from Christianity; they segregated southern minds from honest thinking; and they segregated the Negro from everything. That’s what happened when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would pray upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.

Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
Context: In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 14.
Context: Your grand-father taught me the politics of pride, your grandmother taught me the politics of poverty. I am beholden to both for the fine synthesis. To you, my darling daughter, I give only one message. It is the message of the morrow, the message of history. Believe only in the people, work only for their emancipation and equality. The paradise of God lies under the feet of your mother. The paradise of politics lies under the feet of the people.

Nobel lecture (2005)
Context: It should not be a surprise then that poverty continues to breed conflict. Of the 13 million deaths due to armed conflict in the last ten years, 9 million occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the poorest of the poor live.

Source: The Other America (1962), p. 71
Context: The laws against color can be removed, but that will leave the poverty that is the historic and institutionalized consequence of color. As long as this is the case, being born Negro will continue to be the most profound disability that the United States imposes upon a citizen.

Cassandra (1860)
Context: The "dreams of youth" have become a proverb. That organisations, early rich, fall far short of their promise has been repeated to satiety. But is it extraordinary that it should be so? For do we ever utilise this heroism? Look how it lives upon itself and perishes for lack of food. We do not know what to do with it. We had rather that it should not be there. Often we laugh at it. Always we find it troublesome. Look at the poverty of our life! Can we expect anything else but poor creatures to come out of it?

PENN Address (2004)
Context: The scale of the suffering and the scope of the commitment they often numb us into a kind of indifference. Wishing for the end to AIDS and extreme poverty in Africa is like wishing that gravity didn't make things so damn heavy. We can wish it, but what the hell can we do about it?
Well, more than we think. We can't fix every problem — corruption, natural calamities are part of the picture here — but the ones we can we must. The debt burden, as I say, unfair trade, as I say, sharing our knowledge, the intellectual copyright for lifesaving drugs in a crisis, we can do that. And because we can, we must. Because we can, we must. Amen.

Presidency (1977–1981), Inaugural Address (1977)
Context: The world itself is now dominated by a new spirit. Peoples more numerous and more politically aware are craving and now demanding their place in the sun – not just for the benefit of their own physical condition, but for basic human rights.
The passion for freedom is on the rise. Tapping this new spirit, there can be no nobler nor more ambitious task for America to undertake on this day of a new beginning than to help shape a just and peaceful world that is truly humane.
We are a strong nation, and we will maintain strength so sufficient that it need not be proven in combat – a quiet strength based not merely on the size of an arsenal, but on the nobility of ideas.
We will be ever vigilant and never vulnerable, and we will fight our wars against poverty, ignorance, and injustice – for those are the enemies against which our forces can be honorably marshaled.
We are a purely idealistic Nation, but let no one confuse our idealism with weakness.
Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere. Our moral sense dictates a clearcut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights. We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people.

Speech for the "Make Poverty History" campaign http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4232603.stm. Trafalgar Square, London (3 February 2005).
2000s
Context: 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. And 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. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty. The rich nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped, school the unschooled, and feed the unfed. Ultimately a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for "the least of these". Deeply etched in the fiber of our religious tradition is the conviction that men are made in the image of God and that they are souls of infinite metaphysical value, the heirs of a legacy of dignity and worth. If we feel this as a profound moral fact, we cannot be content to see men hungry, to see men victimized with starvation and ill health when we have the means to help them. The wealthy nations must go all out to bridge the gulf between the rich minority and the poor majority.

1950s, The Chance for Peace (1953)
Context: The details of such disarmament programs are manifestly critical and complex. Neither the United States nor any other nation can properly claim to possess a perfect, immutable formula. But the formula matters less than the faith -- the good faith without which no formula can work justly and effectively. The fruit of success in all these tasks would present the world with the greatest task, and the greatest opportunity, of all. It is this: the dedication of the energies, the resources, and the imaginations of all peaceful nations to a new kind of war. This would be a declared total war, not upon any human enemy but upon the brute forces of poverty and need. The peace we seek, founded upon decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms.

The Marshall Plan Speech (1947)
Context: 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. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him.
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation

1960, The New Frontier
Context: But I tell you the New Frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are the uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus. It would be easier to shrink back from that frontier, to look to the safe mediocrity of the past, to be lulled by good intentions and high rhetoric — and those who prefer that course should not cast their votes for me, regardless of party. But I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision. I am asking each of you to be pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age — to all who respond to the Scriptural call: "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed." For courage — not complacency — is our need today — leadership — not salesmanship. And the only valid test of leadership is the ability to lead, and lead vigorously.

Jihad Watch - Islamic State on recruitment spree in Russia, “moderate” imams can’t counter the jihadis’ appeal http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/10/islamic-state-on-recruitment-spree-in-russia-moderate-imams-cant-counter-the-jihadis-appeal (29 October 2015)
Context: The myth that poverty causes terrorism. In reality, study after study has shown that jihadists are not poor and bereft of economic opportunities, but generally wealthier and better educated than their peers. CNS noted that “according to a Rand Corporation report on counterterrorism, prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2009, ‘Terrorists are not particularly impoverished, uneducated, or afflicted by mental disease. Demographically, their most important characteristic is normalcy (within their environment). Terrorist leaders actually tend to come from relatively privileged backgrounds.’ One of the authors of the RAND report, Darcy Noricks, also found that according to a number of academic studies, ‘Terrorists turn out to be more rather than less educated than the general population.’”

Twitter 6 Apr 2019
2019

Ahmadinejad United Nations Speech: Full Text Transcript, https://www.ibtimes.com/ahmadinejad-united-nations-speech-full-text-transcript-317114 International Business Times, 22 Oct 2011
2011

Source: Pilgrim of the Absolute (1947), p. 125

Islam and Revolution, Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, Translated and Annotated by Hamid Algar, Mizan Press, Berkley, p. 33.
Islam and the imperialists

"Wage Slaves vs Corporations" (1905)

John Pilger, The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies, CounterPunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/22/the-war-on-venezuela-is-built-on-lies/ (22 February 2019)

On the lessons her “home girls” taught her in “‘Either Hyper-Visible or Invisible’: An Interview with Jaquira Díaz” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/either-hyper-visible-or-invisible-an-interview-with-jaquira-diaz/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2019 Oct 29)

On when he discovered his love for art in “Oral history interview with Gronk, 1997 Jan. 20-23” https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-gronk-13586#transcript (Smithsonian Archives of American Art)

Source: The Other America (1962), p. 170

Source: The Other America (1962), p.81

Source: The Other America (1962), Ch. 2

Source: The Other America (1962), Ch. 2

Why did von der Leyen endorse bad politics?," https://euobserver.com/opinion/145798", the EUobserver (September 2, 2019)

Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 509

"The Basis of the Struggle", July 31, 1909, La Follette's Weekly Magazine. Quoted in Matthew Rothschild, Democracy In Print : The Best of The Progressive Magazine, 1909-2009. Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.

2010s, 2017, January, Inaugural address, (January 20, 2017)

“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

On what motivated her to write the play El Grito in “INTERVIEW WITH MIGDALIA CRUZ, PLAYWRIGHT” https://collaboraction.typepad.com/collaboraction/2009/07/interview-with-migdalia-cruz-playwright.html in Collaboraction

On the topics rarely addressed in theater in “Making Invisible Stories Seen, Heard and Felt Interview with Caridad Svich” http://www.critical-stages.org/3/making-invisible-stories-seen-heard-and-felt-interview-with-caridad-svich/ in The IATC webjournal/Revue web de l'AICT – Autumn 2010: Issue No 3

Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ben-norton/ in Bolivia Coup Led by Christian Fascist Paramilitary Leader, a Multi-Millionaire – with Foreign Support https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/12/bolivia-coup-led-by-christian-fascist-paramilitary-leader-a-multi-millionaire-with-foreign-support/, Consortium News, (12 November 2019)
About

"Jack Kirby Interview" http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/6/, Gary Groth, The Comics Journal, #134, (February 1990, posted May 23, 2011).

Interview with Media For Us, 2019

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

Source: Election address (c. November 1935), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (Victor Gollancz, 1994), p. 43

"Rest in oblivion, Jack Chick" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/10/25/rest-oblivion-jack-chick/, Patheos (October 25, 2016)
Patheos

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 6, “Telegram from the Dead” (p. 143)

On the effect mass incarceration has on children in “Schools and the New Jim Crow: An Interview With Michelle Alexander” https://truthout.org/articles/schools-and-the-new-jim-crow-an-interview-with-michelle-alexander/ in Truthout (2013 Jun 4)

Quoted in Cornel West on Bernie, Trump, and Racism, The Intercept, Mehdi Hasan https://theintercept.com/2019/03/07/cornel-west-on-bernie-trump-and-racism/?campaign=homepage-podcast-deconstructed (7 March 2019)
2010s, 2019, March 2019

Twitter Post https://twitter.com/SenSanders, (26 June 2019)
2010s, 2019, June 2019

Source: "I am a Revolutionary Black Woman" (1970), p. 483

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 1 : Our Riches, p. 57

Source: The Conquest of Bread (1892), Ch. 4 : Expropriation