Flannery O'Connor Quotes

Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody poor. Mercy no more could be, If all were happy as we.

I would rather write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the poor than for the amusement of the rich.

Poverty is an artificial, external imposition on a human being; it is not innate in a human being. And since it is external, it can be removed. It is just a question of doing it.

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.

The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich

We are undemocratic, then, in our religion, as is proved by our efforts to “raise” the poor.

It's the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren't small at all.

The miserable consumption of the poor is partly the result of the ostentatious demands of the rich. There isn't enough for both, and the latter get far more than they need...But could anything seriously be done about it?

So long as there are nobles and commoners, the wealthy and the poor, those with power will be heard, and those without ignored. That's the world.

Charity is an ugly trick. It is a virtue grown by the rich on the graves of the poor. Unless it is accompanied by sincere revolt against the present social system, it is a cheap moral swagger. In former times it was used as fire insurance by the rich, but now that the fear of Hell has gone along with the rest of revealed religion, it is used either to gild mean lives with nobility or as a political instrument.

[On The Hunger Games success]: "It hit on the zeitgeist of the disparity b/w the haves and have nots.

Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soulless army of human prey.

Poverty and pride are devoted blood brothers until one, always and inevitably, kills the other.

America is a country that would rather talk about race than class.

Today it is fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately, it is not fashionable to talk with them.

To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.

[President Johnson] had the political will to say that having one in five Americans living in the kind of abject conditions their fellow citizens associated with Third World countries and the novels of Dickens was as dangerous as any battlefield enemy.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.

I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time.... What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.

Without peace there can be no prosperity for any people, rich or poor. And yet, there can be no peace without erasing the harshness of the growing contrast between the rich and the poor.

They were the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen. They were trying to save their souls- and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not managed to get a decent existence for their bodies?

We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to bed hungry every night.

Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty.

Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.

Some go to prison for stealing, and others for believing that a better system can be provided and maintained than one that makes it necessary for a man to steal in order to live.