Sendhil Mullainathan Quotes

You can't wish away poverty overnight.

I was the second of six kids. I wouldn't say we were poor; we had no money. That's different.

It is the poor man who'll ever count his flock.

Wealth does not trickle down to the poor. Oxfam knows this, the IMF knows this, the World Bank knows this. Poor people have always known this.

The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

Mine was quite a working-class childhood with very little money, and my father was out of work a couple of times, which had quite a traumatic effect.

I've experienced poverty and plenty, and there's a lesson to be learned when you're brought up in poverty.

I am definitely not rich.

Growing up in inner-city Glasgow, it sometimes seemed to me money hadn't been invented.

I grew up in an era of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a very big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there simply wasn't enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.

We continue to blame the poor for their own condition. They are lazy. We do not want to know that the poorest of the poor are toddlers under three years of age.

We didn't really feel poor. You don't know that as a kid, but we really didn't have any cash. When machinery broke down, we didn't have money for parts, so we did our best to fix it.

There's not much money in Tallahassee. Not many people can leave Tallahassee because they don't have the means.

We had plenty of clothes and no money.

In Latin America, you don't do things for the money because there is no money.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.

It's very difficult when you have $1.50 per day to spend on food and drink, but for people who live this reality, that money also has to cover medical expenses and education, fuel and shelter - sometimes for an entire family.

Poverty affects people of all races.

Growing up in a lower-income family, you don't have the resources to make ends meet and you have to find creative ways to get by.

Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn't billions of dollars people needed right away.

Worrying about bills, food, or other problems leaves less capacity to think ahead or to exert self-discipline. So, poverty imposes a mental tax.

If the nation is rich but people are poor, the country cannot be strong, and society will be unstable.

I grew up with no money. No money. I always struggled and had the sense that there was this other class of people who went to college - this was when I was younger.

In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.

My grandma forbid us from describing ourselves as poor. She said, 'we're broke.' Because broke is temporary.