Michael Harrington Quotes

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

This is a sick business. It's so sad.

We live increasingly in a world of haves and have-nots, of gated communities next to ghettos, of extreme poverty and unbelievable riches. Some enjoy rights that are completely denied to others. Relative inequalities are exploding, and the world's poorest, despite all the advances of globalisation, may even be getting poorer.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

You grow up in America and you're told from day one, 'This is the land of opportunity.' That everybody has an equal chance to make it in this country. And then you look at places like Harlem, and you say, 'That is absolutely a lie.'

I was very sensitive to the environment around, and this disparity in people, seeing beggars and laborers not paid well, used to disturb me. So these emotions in these roles came very naturally to me.

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.

Slavery is no more sinful, by the Christian code, than it is sinful to wear a whole coat, while another is in tatters, to eat a better meal than a neighbor, or otherwise to enjoy ease and plenty, while our fellow creatures are suffering and in want.

Poor men's reasons are not heard.

The organization and constant onward sweep of this movement exemplifies the resentment of the many toward the selfishness, greed and the neglect of the few.

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 is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

If we continue to create a world where there is poverty and disrespect, there will continue to be terrorism.

The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.

Let him who expects one class of society to prosper in the highest degree, while the other is in distress, try whether one side; of the face can smile while the other is pinched.

Jamaica has problems; America has problems; everywhere has problems.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

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

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.

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

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

It was not until I got down to Latin America that I began to get a political education. Whatever my ideas when I went down there, I saw things around me every day that influenced me. I saw the terrible economic and social conditions, and the injustices that could not be ignored.

The most disastrous revolutions are produced by the extreme of physical want; the most happy, by wants of a moral kind, physical want being absent.

Poverty gives rise to the desire for change, the desire for action and the desire for revolution.