Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

I'd been influenced by reading books on art and colonies that existed in Paris and places like that and so when I came to Europe I came to France and I had very little money, and I had to live low and stayed in a bohemian section of Paris with a lot of other students, who were from medical school, science school and art school. We all lived in a kind of communal way and I was challenged politically, because I didn't have a clue and they would ask me questions about the Algerian War, which was very big in France in the late '50s.

Generational poverty, most of us don't know what that means.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

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.'

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

The middle class has disappeared. We have a highway to poverty and no roads coming out.

Deep persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation’s promise …. All of us are diminished when any are hopeless.

The Devil dances in an empty pocket.

It is easy to say that poverty is no crime .... It is a blunder though, and is punished ... A poor man is despised the whole world over.

My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.

I do not accept the fact that a person should be poor if he works very hard.

Riches run after the rich, and poverty runs after the poor.

The chaos of poverty feeds on itself.

For you must both of you bear in mind that you remain still, as really and truly as ever, your master's property, and therefore it will be justly expected, both by God and man, that you behave and conduct yourselves as obedient and faithful servants.

I was a poor kid. I came from nothing. We didn't have any money; a lot of times we didn't have any food, and now, all of a sudden, I'm a superhero in a Marvel movie? Talk about the American dream, man - I'm living it.

I grew up in a family where my parents worked full-time and still found themselves and their six children trapped like so many of the working poor.

I've always sworn that not having enough money has saved me from mediocrity.

Poverty is bitter, but it has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous.

When you come from nothing, you're basically just trying to get escape velocity, which means you and your family don't have to worry about being broke and that's all I ever cared about.

Nothing so denies a person liberty as the total absence of money.

Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.

Years ago we hardly had anything to eat. Now I earn more money and I see every opponent as a man that tries to put me back to that poorer period. That man has to be eliminated.

When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears, they are faint from want of food.

I was determined not to remain poor.

Mankind's survival is dependent on man's ability to solve the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war; the solution of these problems is in turn dependent upon man's squaring his moral progress with his scientific progress, and learning the practical art of living in harmony.