Sendhil Mullainathan Quotes

…nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

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

Full stomachs don't believe empty ones.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

Verdiana was the child of poor though well-born parents, and her knowledge of the sufferings of the poor from her own experience in early years made her ever full of pity for those in need.

The biggest problem is that the rich people paying the bills do not share the same goals as the poor people they are trying to help. The wealthy have weak incentives to get the right amount of the right thing to those who need it; the poor are in no position to complain if they don’t.

Poverty is ever an inbred growth

He whose belly is full believes not him whose is empty.

When I was a young fellow I was very much disturbed by there being some people with lots of money and lots of people with no money.

It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.

When were you born, who are your parents, where did you grow up? None of us earns these things. These things were given to us. So when we strip away all of our luck and our privilege, and we consider where we'd be without them, it becomes much easier to see someone who's poor and say, "That could be me." And that's empathy.

Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

The world does not have time to be with the poor, to learn with the poor, to listen to the poor. To listen to the poor is an exercise of great discipline, but such listening surely is what is required if charity is not to become a hatred of the poor for being poor.

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

Short of genius a rich man cannot even imagine poverty.

Poverty can teach lessons that privilege cannot.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

I don't know how the poor farmers deal with such situations in real life. It's really sad.

Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty.

At the end of the day, we have an economy that works for the rich by cheating the poor, and unequal schools are the result of that, not the cause.

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

Too often, wealthy people born on third base blithely criticize the poor for failing to hit home runs. The advantaged sometimes perceive empathy as a sign of muddle-headed weakness rather than as a marker of civilization.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

The rich don’t want the poor to get ahead of them.