Karen Abbott Quotes

My parents were children during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it scarred them. Especially my father, who saw destitution in his Brooklyn, New York neighborhood; adults standing in so called 'bread lines,' children begging in the streets.

One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

The most striking development of the great depression of 1929 is a profound skepticism of the future of contemporary society among large sections of the American people.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

I grew up in northwest London on a council estate. My parents are Irish immigrants who came over here when they were very young and worked in menial jobs all their lives, and I'm one of many siblings.

The difference of the degrees in which the individuals of a great community enjoy the good things of life has been a theme of declaration and discontent in all ages.

'Great Expectations' has been described as 'Dickens's harshest indictment of society.' Which it is. After all, it's about money. About not having enough money; about the fever of the getting of money; about having too much money; about the taint of money.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

Poverty brings one blessing in Turkey - the poor man is of necessity a monogamist.

Lots of people have gone from public housing to do great things in the world and have a tremendous sense of duty to their fellow man because of it.

Great numbers of Asian Americans do not fit the model minority or 'tiger family' stereotypes, living instead in multigenerational poverty far from the mainstream.

My boyhood life in New York City has impressed me with the popular ignorance and also with the great need of something better than local lore and weather proverbs.

Haiti is 10.4-million people, of whom 35 per cent are children under 15. The country has always had great potential - and this is still the case. Our ill fortune has long been a matter of bad governance. And now things have changed.

When the Great Fire of London destroyed most of the medieval city in 1666, Christopher Wren was invited to design a new one. Within days, he had drawn up an elegant grid of broad boulevards leading to majestic squares, but it came to nothing - the existing landowners wanted things as they had been.

People are becoming more and more aware of how the dominance of development and business is altering their lives and, in particular, their own heritage.

We were growing up in West Virginia. Everybody was poor there in the southern part of the state. It was like growing up in the Great Depression from the stories I hear people tell. Everybody was poor and so we didn't know that we were any different from anybody else.

A middle child, I was born in the depths of the Great Depression. My dad and mom were factory workers, struggling to make ends meet.

This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.

During the Great Depression, African Americans were faced with problems that were not unlike those experienced by the most disadvantaged groups in society. The Great Depression had a leveling effect, and all groups really experienced hard times: poor whites, poor blacks.

There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.

The balance of our population, our human stock is threatened. A recent article in Poverty, published by the Child Poverty Action Group, showed that a high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world and to bring them up.

The illegitimacy rate is going up every year. If you expect a government program to change that, you know more about government programs than I do.

There was more violent crime among poor Irish immigrants in New York City 100 years ago than there is among blacks and Puerto Ricans today.

The machines, which mark the triumph of science, become, by reason of the antithetic conditions of the social plexus, instruments which impoverish millions and millions of artisans and free peasants.