Nicholas Kristof Quotes

Colour is not the issue in America; class is.

When the rich think about the poor, they have poor ideas.

One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged.

Sadly, because of the enormous gap between rich and poor, some mothers can afford helpers, but many can't. Those who can would be kinder to refrain from criticizing other women.

It is hard to interest those who have everything in those who have nothing.

It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.

The messenger matters. When people of modest means complain about inequality, it usually gets written off as class warfare, but when billionaires complain, the problem is redefined.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

We are undemocratic, then, in our religion, as is proved by our efforts to “raise” the poor.

When I was a young fellow I was very much disturbed by there being some people with lots of money and lots of people with no money.

God help the rich, the poor can look after themselves

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

The competition of the poor takes away from the reward of the rich.

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.

Liberty is impossible if 36 thousand families at the top of the economic pyramid get as much income as 12 million families at the bottom.

Everybody in politics claims to want to get everybody out of poverty. What's the opposite? Wealth. And what is often criticized by the left? Wealth.

It's hard to get people to empathize with the poor. You can get some people to sympathize with the poor, but to empathize is actually very hard, because most people are not poor. I realized that scarcity gives you a thread.

The rich stick together; the poor and the marginalised are thrown together.

The laws are stacked for the wealthy.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

Men who are scandalized at the lack of freedom in Russia do not ask themselves how real is liberty among the poor, the weak, and the ignorant in capitalist society.

Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.