Victor Hugo Quotes

Poor man. Poor mankind.

While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight While little children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight While there is a drunkard left, While there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, While there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight-I'll fight to the very end!

We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life's marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

So long as there are poor, - I am poor, - So long as there are prisons, - I am a prisoner, - So long as there are sick, - I am weak, - So long as there is ignorance, - I must learn the truth, - So long as there is hate, - I must love, - So long as there is hunger, - I am famished. - Such is the identification Our Divine Lord would have us make with all whom He made in love and for love.

I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance.

To begin a reform, go not into the places of the great and rich; go rather to those whose cups of happiness are empty--to the poor and humble.

A religion true to its nature must also be concerned about man's social conditions. […] Any religion that professes to be concerned with the souls of men and is not concerned with the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them, is a dry-as-dust religion.

The world remains beset by so much human suffering, poverty and deprivation. It is in your hands to make of our world a better one for all, especially the poor, vulnerable and marginalised.

The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century.

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.

Education is the complete answer to all these other social issues.

… mankind will no longer passively submit to crushing poverty with its effects of death, disease, and decline.

A change of mentality is needed, no longer seeing the poor as a burden, or as intruders trying to profit from others, but as people seeking to share the goods of the world so that we can create a just and prosperous world for all.

I left college with a deep sense that I needed to understand poverty more.

Poverty does not belong in civilized human society. Its proper place is in a museum. That's where it will be.

There is much to be said for trying to improve some disadvantaged people’s lot. There is nothing to be said for trying to create heaven on earth.

I will use the rest of my life to help the poor overcome the problems confronting them - poverty is the greatest challenge facing humanity. That is why I build schools; I want to free people from poverty and illiteracy.

Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

A Christianity which will not help those who are struggling from the bottom to the top of society, needs another Christ to die for it.

I didn’t create poverty. This church didn’t create poverty. Poverty is not an issue, human suffering is not an issue at all, they were there before the creation of mankind.

When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed.

The issue of poverty is not a statistical issue. It is a human issue.

I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them!

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.