Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Quotes

I have always had a horror and detestation of poverty.

I was born on a plantation, and things weren't so good. We didn't have any money. I never thought of the word 'poor' 'til I got to be a man, but when you live in a house that you can always peek out of and see what kind of day it is, you're not doing so well. And your rest room is not inside the house.

How fared the Irish artisan—how fared the Irish peasant? Where one pined, as he yet pines, in your beggared cities, the other starves, upon your fruitful soil.

You don't have to be impoverished to understand poverty.

There are just way too many people suffering out there.

It has been tough when I have been with the national team and we have gone to play in some of the poorer areas in Brazil. You see people come and watch us train or play a match, and then you know some of them are going home with no food on the plate.

I was just a regular kid in poverty, struggling.

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

Our mothers and fathers want change. They worked all of their lives, but today live in destitution.

There's this huge number of desperate people.

Poverty is the mother of crime.

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient.

Desperation is a fact of life in many poor, overcrowded countries.

Poverty is often off the beaten track. It always has been.

Poverty is slavery.

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.

Too much is made for us; too much is given to us - even those of us who are underprivileged. The poverty is given to us. The difficulties are given to us.

Poverty leads to protests.

I grew up on Section 8 housing, food stamps, welfare, and dealing with social services. I never had a Christmas. I never had a birthday.

As I have traveled the state, I have seen firsthand that there are Arizonans who are hurting.

We had to leave Norway and go where it was all happening, which was London. We loved it there, but it was hard. We had no money - we were literally starving. It started to get ugly.

Poverty is everywhere, but in Africa, there is more.

In a country like Mexico, you can't forget about poverty - about how half of the population lives in poverty, and how half of that half live in extreme poverty.

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

What hurts me most is poverty, and that's what led me to become a rebel.