Colin Powell Quotes

The disparity between the haves and have-nots was always blatantly obvious to me, and it's that exact gap that drove me to start writing and pick up a pen. I wanted to explain and understand the world around me because it was easy to see it was corrupted.

The root cause of poverty is social injustice and the bad government that abets it

Nobody is poor unless he stand in need of justice.

How unfair the fate which ordains that those who have the least should be always adding to the treasury of the wealthy.

To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

…In certain parts of Latin America, the seizure of the vast majority of the wealth by an oligarchy of owners bereft of social consciousness, the practical absence or the shortcomings of a rule of law, military dictators making a mockery of elementary human rights, the corruption of certain powerful officials, the savage practices of some foreign capital interests constitute factors which nourish a passion for revolt among those who thus consider themselves the powerless victims of a new colonialism in the technological, financial, monetary, or economic order.

Remove poverty from politics.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

Our nation cannot call for respect for human rights when it lacks the moral courage to save its own cities, its own poor, its own minorities whose rights are trampled upon.

America is like a melting pot. The people at the bottom get burned, and the scum floats to the top.

The imperialists have also imposed on us an unjust economic order, and thereby divided our people into two groups: oppressors and oppressed. Hundreds of millions of Muslims are hungry and deprived of all form of health care and education.

As long as the working-people fold hands and pray the gods in Washington to give them work, so long they will not get it. So long as they tramp the streets, whose stones they lay, whose filth they clean, whose sewers they dig, yet upon which they must not stand too long lest the policeman bid them "move on"; as long as they go from factory to factory, begging for the opportunity to be a slave, receiving the insults of bosses and foremen, getting the old "no," the old shake of the head, in these factories they built, whose machines they wrought; so long as they consent to herd like cattle, in the cities, driven year after year, more and more, off the mortgaged land, the land they cleared, fertilized, cultivated, rendered of value; so long as they stand shivering, gazing thro' plate glass windows at overcoats, which they made, but cannot buy, starving in the midst of food they produced but cannot have; so long as they continue to do these things vaguely relying upon some power outside themselves, be it god, or priest, or politician, or employer, or charitable society, to remedy matters, so long deliverance will be delayed.

Does being practical mean we prop up a legal system that's unfair, that bears its weight down on black men and black women, and by extension if you are Hispanic or indigenous or poor? Does being practical mean you don't say to the American people you deserve better than you're getting? That's not the practical we want.

I'm not persuaded that the opposite of poverty is wealth - I've come to believe... that the opposite of poverty is justice.

The cancer that demands our urgent attention is corruption and poverty.

Poverty is rooted in injustice.

I think it's criminal the way poverty is allowed to flourish.

High corruption and the influence of big business and the wealthy elite keeps the poorest Nigerians trapped in poverty and cut off from the benefits of economic growth and basic services. Some people - searching for the means to survive - became vulnerable to groups like Boko Haram.

We need radical, transformative solutions to address the inequality that is blighting millions of people's lives.

The miseries suffered by our people come more from the shameless exploitation of our countries.

The opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.

Poverty is not natural; it is man-made

It is by human avarice or human stupidity, not by the churlishness of nature, that we have poverty and overwork.

Poverty is curable, but it’s just not done, because it's not profitable. And that is the kind of violence that's perpetuated on humanity.