Nick Hanauer Quotes

Very few people can afford to be poor.

Like a lot of black people, I grew up straight po'. Wasn't no question about whether we was po', either. If you really wanted to know, all you had to do was look in our refrigerator.

For a good part of my childhood, we were super poor and lived in government housing. I don't characterize the American dream as being successful and having a lot of material wealth to show for it. I did fine without it for a really long time.

I'm proud that I've never stopped writing about being poor.

Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.

You and I can be busy, and we take a vacation from work. You can't take a break from being poor. You can't say, 'Hey I've had enough of worrying about money, I'm just going to be rich for a couple of weeks until I've recovered.'

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach.

Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

Thousands of Ohio families are going deeper and deeper in debt just trying to pay their heating bills, fill prescriptions, and buy groceries. The current minimum wage is simply not enough.

There are many Asian-Americans who are living in poverty, especially our senior citizens.

It was such a struggle for me to make it off welfare. I was getting $630 a month for myself and my children with no support from their fathers. The rent was $600 a month, and if you got a job, they took it out of your welfare.

Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.

I grew up in poverty. For 25 years I was fed on aid.

All the arguments which are brought to represent poverty as no evil show it evidently to be a great evil.

Poverty is not a disgrace, but it's terribly inconvenient.

People who didn't know the depression just don't know what being poor means.

Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth, it buys as long as it has the means to buy.

The high cost of housing is crushing poor families and sending them to a state of desperation.

I grew up very poor in rural Alabama.

I come from the lower middle class, originally. We didn't have anything.

My mom didn't have a lot of money.

I come from a working class family. We barely had anything.

I didn't grow up in the slums or anything that dire, but I know what it is to grow up without having money or being able to support family.

I was one of the poorest people in America.

I was working at Lowes and Target, then FedEx, and still did not have enough money to pay rent on my own.