Pope Francis Quotes

Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

Global poverty is a powder keg ignitable by our own indifference.

Economic inequality is not about food stamps and homeless shelters. It is about being a devotee of social justice and equality.

Labour ministers often look puzzled when reports show that Britain has one of the lowest levels of social mobility in the developed world. They just don't get it. They see poverty, inequality, fairness, as all about income. For the past 12 years, they have relied on tax credits to solve this. But tax credits do not solve poverty: they mask it.

Disparity is Australia's worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to 'close the gap.'

The greatest difficulty with the world is not its ability to produce, but the unwillingness to share.

I am open-eyed about what poverty does to people.

My sympathies have always been for working-class people.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.

Oscar Wilde said the rich and the poor are equal - they can both sleep under the bridge. Right? Do they have a right? You're damn right they have a right!

I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.

I'm concerned about - the oppression of the poor.

We love wealth, and we hate poor people. I know people who work in TV news who have actually been told to do stand-ups rather than put interviews with poor people on the air. We physically don't want to look at them.

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall.

I think we've made tremendous progress on racism. We've even made progress on war. We've made almost no progress on poverty.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.

To deal with radicalism and extremism, we need to deal with economic inequality. This is what I learned from my experience in Solo and then in Jakarta.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

Excessive economic and social disparity between individuals and peoples of the one human race is a source of scandal and militates against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international peace.

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings, goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury, and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent.

We will not settle for a state that will settle for an underclass.