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Poverty

Wednesday 21st of January 2026

Poverty Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one's feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty Being poor is like trying to climb out of a pit while roped together with your family. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, September 24, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Poverty A call girl is simply someone who hates poverty more than she hates sin. Sydney Biddle Barrows, Mayflower Madam © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty Everyone is happy talking about eliminating poverty, because this looks like an admirable and ethical response to the problems of inequality, while leaving the structures of power untouched. David Kynaston © 2019 Kwiple.com
Poverty Generally speaking, the poorer person summers where he winters. Fran Lebowitz, “How Not to Marry a Millionaire” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Poverty A human body doesn't care if acute stress is caused by almost getting your electricity shut off or by a looming deadline on a million-dollar contract. The reason that poor people wind up coping in ways that seem pointlessly self-destructive is that all the constructive stuff costs money. I can't afford to join a gym. I can't just pay a shrink to listen to me vent. I can't go shopping or find an accupuncturist or good masseuse or whatever else it is that the people above me do to cope. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. Stephen Jay Gould © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty It doesn't make sense to hire people at wages that guarantee they'll be desperate and then be disappointed when they're not always capable of pretending otherwise. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty It is hard for an empty Sack to stand upright. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography © 2020 Kwiple.com
Poverty It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilisation … to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor? This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with. Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences – deep, corrosive, obstinate differences – radiating painful roots into the community, and into the family, and the nature of the individual. The differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression. For the white they are a constant reminder of guilt. But they must be faced and they must be dealt with and they must be overcome. Lyndon Johnson, 1963, Howard University Commencement Address © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty The next time you feel as though you're shouldering more than your fair share of society's burdens, ask yourself: How badly do I have to pee right now, and do I need permission? Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty One must always have in mind one simple fact – there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor. John Kenneth Galbraith © 2019 Kwiple.com
Poverty Our obligation to the poor is not just one of providing assistance to strangers but one of compensation for harms that we have caused and are still causing them. Peter Singer, “What Should a Billionaire Give – And What Should You?” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty Personally I couldn't care less. One man's as good as another as long as they pay their way. Only there's people around that don't feel that way. So if an undesirable asks you for the key, the shitter's out of order. Mario Florestano, owner of a gas station with a restroom, to Ernie Munger, his employee, in Leonard Gardner's Fat City © 2015 Kwiple.com
Poverty Poor people have gotten the message loud and clear. The powers that be are not concerned about us. Meanwhile, wealthier people get all exercised about a poor person dropping a cigarette butt on a city sidewalk, as if this is proof that poor people just don't care. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty Poverty is a denial of rights sold as a character flaw. Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Poverty Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. Linda Tirado, “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty Poverty  is the parent of revolution and crime. Aristotle, Politics © 2024 Kwiple.com
Poverty The reason for the disconnect between the actual housing nightmare of the poor and “poverty,” as officially defined, is simple: the official poverty level is still calculated by the archaic method of taking the bare-bones cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying this number by three. Yet food is relatively inflation-proof, at least as compared with rent. In the 1960s … food accounted for 24 percent of the average family budget … housing 29 percent. In 1999, food … 16 percent … while housing … soared to 37 percent. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty [T]he single best predictor of going broke in America was [found by analyzing data] to be a woman with a child. Not a woman alone. Not a couple with no kids. Not elderly or African American or Latina. One kid. Two kids. It didn't matter. The strongest  predictor was to be a woman with at least one child. Elizabeth Warren, Persist  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Poverty Sure, we can beat the odds. Your're reading this book by a service worker, after all. But the irony of my success here is that I didn't get this chance because I worked my balls off for some asshole who thought me ungrateful for my sub-living wage. You're reading this book by me because lightning struck, because my story went viral. And by definition, that can't happen for everyone. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty There are no special economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs. If you can't put up the two month's rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for rent by the week. If you have only a room, with a hot plate at best, you can't save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead. You eat fast food or the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can be microwaved in a convenience store. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty This is my bottom-line point about work and poverty. It's far more demoralizing to work and be poor than to be unemployed and poor. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty The tremendous Labour question remains absolutely untouched — the question whether the toil of life is not to provide a sufficiency of bread. No thoughtful man can suppose for a moment that this question can be put aside. No man with a head and heart can suppose that any considerable class of a nation will submit for ever to toil incessantly for bare necessaries – without comfort, ease, or luxury, now – without a prospect for their children and without a hope for their old age. A social idea or system which compels such a state of things as this must be, is in so far, worn out. Harriet Martineau, History of England During the Thirty Years’ Peace © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. Linda Tirado, “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country  © 2020 Kwiple.com
 
Poverty The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our ociety. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed © 2022 Kwiple.com