Alissa Quart Quotes

Very few people can afford to be poor.

The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.

We're now in one of those periods when the reality of intense pressure on the middle class diverges from long-held assumptions of how the American bargain should work

People internalize, from the jail to student loan debt, to credit card debt, to unemployment to the whole collective. It manifests itself in many ways, in people's home lives, domestic stuff.

Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It meets a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts that is something on which to pride yourself but poverty itself is romanticized by fools.

Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this too, if you're feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you.

Being poor with three small children is terrifying. You can't make any plans. You know you're not going on holiday, ever. There's no way you could ever afford driving lessons or a car. And the guilt I used to feel: they had holes in their shoes, and at one point, I had to send them to school wearing Wellingtons when the sun was shining.

Rich folks always talk hard times.

In my house, it is always a scramble from paycheck to paycheck.

My parents, products of the Great Depression, were successful people, but lived in a state of constant fear that my sister and I, and they, would sink into the kind of economic insecurity that their generation knew so well.

Unfair servicing practices can worsen a family's already difficult economic situation, and the injury echoes from the family to the community and ultimately throughout the economy.

There are people with no high school education who are poor. but there are also university graduates on food bank lines. There are people who are poor because they have made bad choices, gotten addicted to drugs, burned bridges with friends and family — and then there are people who have never taken a drug in their lives, who have huge social networks, and who still can’t make ends meet.

Growing up low income and poor, I didn't have the best relationship with money.

Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes.

There were times when I didn't have enough money, I didn't have enough work, and I would panic.

Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.

For too many of our young people, that once-promised American dream has given way to an American debt burden and a bleak job market.

Increased tariffs and a weakened pound would mean higher food prices, hurting the poorest families - and the women trying to make ends meet at the heart of them - the most.

There's a lot of journalism about poverty, but sometimes it just helps to see that there's a real person who becomes a real mom, who is working with unsustainable wages that could eventually destroy her.

I grew up in a household where a missed day of work meant bills were not paid, I've lived through the stress that confronts many South Carolina families.

We need to do more to help the men and women across the country who are working hard but still struggling to make ends meet due to low wages and high healthcare costs.

New Labour has created a society increasingly oppressed by the worry of personal debt.

My family, like many families here in South Carolina, have faced difficult financial situations.

We had to grow up very fast. There never was a day when there wasn't shouting about the bills.

Whatever people's backgrounds or values, a society where more and more people face a daily struggle to house, clothe and even feed themselves and their families cannot possibly be the answer.