Clarissa Pinkola Estes Quotes

There are 200 million poor in the world who would gladly take the vow of poverty if they could eat, dress and have a home like I do

I spent almost 25 years as a foreign correspondent, and the world's primary problem is poverty.

The first world is going to have to account for this sort of horrible poverty in our midst. We have to, first of all, become aware of it. We have to take responsibility for it. And then we have to do something about it for our own freedom, for our own salvation, for our own humanity.

There are many different ways to be poor in the world but increasingly there seems to be one single way to be rich.

The measure of the greatness of a society is found in the way it treats those most in need, those who have nothing apart from their poverty!

We live in a world where economic positions - income and wealth - are very unevenly distributed, and this leads to the widespread persistence of poverty.

The Jesus I follow is the peacemaker, is one who says forgive your enemies, who worries about the poor, who worries about the poorest of the poor instead of the richest of the rich.

I am a sensitive person, so it is actually saddening to learn that these poverty-stricken families are most of the time mistreated or looked down upon. Help the poor, like how you would want to be helped if you were in their position.

The reason that the World Trade Center got hit is because there are a lot of people living in abject poverty out there who don't have any hope for a better life.

Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.

This concern for the poor is in the Gospel, it is within the tradition of the Church, it is not an invention of communism and it must not be turned into an ideology, as has sometimes happened before in the course of history.

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 are many pages in the book, many kinds of lives we each can live, many ways to be rich, and even more to be poor.

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

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age.

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

In India, the poverty is so vast that the state cannot control it. It can beat people, but it can't prevent the poor from flooding the roads, the cities, the parks and railway station platforms.

We now undertake that we cannot rest while millions of our people suffer the pain and indignity of poverty in all its forms.

Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, FDR, looked south and said I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill clad, ill nourished. Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, I see one third of a nation and it can go to hell.

To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.

Lyndon Johnson believed the poor deserved a better life than the economy was providing them. He thought private power and greed had to be checked by a vibrant democracy.

Not for myself I make this prayer, But for this race of mine That stretches forth from shadowed places Dark hands for bread and wine.

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.

I'm very familiar with poverty. I find it easy to be with, whether I'm in America or in Africa or in Asia. Wherever I go and find the environment of those who are living in poverty and resisting poverty is a great in which I have great comfort.

For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.