Amanda Lindhout Quotes

Poverty, discrimination and ignorance decrease growth.

The problem of the Middle East is poverty more than politics.

Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth, and other social problems.

Poverty and lack of education are ruining our planet.

A country so rich that it can send people to the moon still has hundreds of thousands of its citizens who can't read. That's terribly troubling to me.

If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

It is conflict overall that mires people in poverty. That is the first law of development.

Every country has a part that is undeveloped.

The world has grown rich and refined, but chiefly by the efforts of those who themselves continue poor and ignorant.

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.'

Bolivia is not yet a country of equals.

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

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

Mexico has not achieved the advances that the population demands or deserves.

A shining city is perhaps all the President [Ronald Reagan] sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another part to the shining city. In this part of the shining city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, and more people who need help and can't find it.

We go from summit to summit, and our people go from abyss to abyss … the drama of terrible underdevelopment.

This is a third world environment.

Poverty has many roots, but the tap root is ignorance.

The greatest problem we [in Kenya] face is the growing number of people living in poverty. The related sense of hopelessness has to be impacting on every part of environmental management.

The Latin American people have become fed up with the 500 year siesta and the lack of opportunity. So they come to the United States. But that is because the leaders of their countries do not do anything to improve the situation…. When Mexican President Fox took office he observed that over half the Mexican population was living in poverty and that he was unlikely to make significant changes during his remaining term in office. That was a sophisticated way of saying to the Mexicans, “Go to the United States!”

There are many communities in the United States where the average family income is pitifully low. It is in those communities that we find the poorest educational facilities and the worst conditions of health. Why? It is not because they are satisfied to live as they do. It is because those communities have the lowest per capital wealth and income; therefore the lowest ability to pay taxes; and therefore inadequate functioning of local government.

With industrialization the gulf between the employed and the employer is growing wider; social contrasts are becoming sharper—as liveried carriages appear, so do barefoot children.

I saw exhausted soil, old and decaying towns, wretchedly-neglected roads, and, in every respect, an absence of enterprise and improvement, distinguish the region through which we have come, in contrast to that in which we live. Such has been the effect of slavery.

Being raised in a developing country opened my eyes to so much I cannot tolerate. In Colombia, education is sometimes considered a luxury, not a human right. And it's not a priority in the agendas of many leaders.

For too many, the shot for a brighter future is simply out of reach.