Edwin Lefevre Quotes

You never know how you'll turn out till you've been down to half a dollar and no prospects.

I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.

When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money.

As far as I was concerned, the Depression was an ill wind that blew some good. If it hadn't occurred, my parents would have given me my college education. As it was, I had to scrabble for it.

I grew up very nice. But after college, my father said you're on you own. So I was dead broke for years. So I know what it's - I lived on 600 dollars a month for six years. I know what it's like to be dead broke. I feel bad for people who are struggling now.

There is no education like adversity.

I learned that unemployment can be the great educator.

Put all other sufferings on one side of the scale, and poverty on the other, and poverty would be heavier.

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

The kids who take up athletics actually come from modest to poor backgrounds. They make it on their own steam; some of them don't even have the basic means like shoes and enough food to eat.

Rarely they rise by virtue's aid who lie plunged in the depth of helpless poverty.

Of all the advantages which come to any young man ... poverty is the greatest.

I saw certain things that I think maybe other kids are protected from. Like, I saw my parents struggling. I knew that we were cutting out coupons and buying dented cans because they were cheaper. And all our furniture was from the garbage. It was just - and to me because I was a kid, all that stuff was really exciting.

I grew up in a poor family. I had to cut everyone's hair, because we didn't have money for entertainment.

Being broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.

I think being poor has been good for me. I saw how my mom and dad struggled, and how they could stretch a dollar farther than you could begin to imagine.

Having grown up in dire poor, the thing that I hated the most in life was poverty.

It is hard to apply oneself to study when there is no money to pay for food and lodging. I almost never explain these things when folks are asking me why I don't do this or that.

I was happy, I wasn't beaten, and I lacked nothing. But it wasn't what people expect - it was very much sort of pinching and scraping. I don't know how my mother did it.

I was having trouble making ends meet, and my beginnings weren't meeting either.

I had a low image of myself because I was brought up in the deep Depression.

I mean, when you grow up in the inner city and you grow up in a single-parent household, that's - those are humbling times, you know?

In my early days in school, I had no shoes, no school bags. There were days I had only one meal... I walked miles and crossed rivers to school every day. Didn't have power, didn't have generators, studied with lanterns, but I never despaired.

I think my father kept struggling to get us into better neighborhoods, better schools. One of the worst jobs he had was folding shirts under these fluorescent lights all day at the equivalent of a Kmart. I remember visiting him at work, thinking, 'When I grow up, I've got to do anything else.'

It is difficult to describe in short the enthusiasm and devotion provoked by and given to my research. We lived almost in poverty. I used pencils, two for a nickel, and could not buy a fountain pen, when I lost mine.