Victor Hugo Quotes

There is despair, Mr President, in the faces of those you do not see; in the places that you do not visit.

Poverty ennobles no one; it brutalizes common people and makes them hungry and old.

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

Gentlemen, I speak to you for the miners' families... The little children are gathered around a bare table without anything to eat. They are not asking for a $100,000 yacht like yours, Mr.______..." (here, he would gesture with his cigar toward an operator), "...or for a Rolls-Royce limousine like yours, Mr. _____..." (staring at another operator). They are asking only for a slim crust of bread.

I think it's criminal the way poverty is allowed to flourish.

Once any group in society stands in a relatively deprived position in relation to other groups, it is genuinely deprived.

Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred Bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, Teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man's neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul's bright torch as fast as it is kindled!

I travel around the world, experiencing every language, every religion... some places where there's just no reason to smile, because their lives are so difficult.

If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow with the neglect the market fosters.

Poverty is unnecessary.

I come from a world where the word 'trauma' doesn't exist, because we are too poor. I didn't have an easy life compared to the average European. But compared to the average African, it wasn't all that bad.

Poverty can teach lessons that privilege cannot.

It's often hard for us to imagine going without some of our luxuries like travel, dining out, or Internet, much less our basic necessities like food and water. But try for a minute to imagine how life would be with such deprivations.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

I've lived places these guys can't defecate in.

Beware the ends of the earth and the exotic: the drama is on your doorstep wherever the slums; are, wherever there is malnutrition, wherever there is exploitation and cruelty.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

Where is there beauty when you see deprivation and starvation?

We hate our squalor.

There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

It's outrageous to line your pockets off the misery of the poor. Outrageous, the crimes some human beings must endure. It's a blessing to wash your face in the summer solstice rain. It's outrageous a man like me stand here and complain. But I'm tired.

… the unhappy Peasant cannot survive in his humble shelter; today pigswill is his only nourishment; what was once lavished on swine is now shared between man and beast. The People ask only for bread; they are even willing to pay for it with the sweat of their brows: at least let them eat it without watering it with tears.

Our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich. The pilgrimage is a witness to the suffering we have seen for generations

When someone is bothered by someone claiming lack of drinking water, lack of medicine for the sick, and lack of food for the hungry, that person has problems too deep to be explained in an interview.

People who are underprivileged have more to grieve and have more to overcome.