Charles Bukowski Quotes

In America itself, after 30 years of experimenting with the Great Society programs, there is widespread crime and violence, children kill each other with guns, neighborhoods are insecure, old people feel forgotten, families are falling apart. And the media attacks the integrity and character of your leaders with impunity, drags down all those in authority and blames everyone but itself.

Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soulless army of human prey.

A rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others.

(Chicago is) the only major city in the country where you can easily buy your way out of a murder rap.

I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left.

Violence in Mexico has its origins in the lack of development and corruption.

Ours is not a poor country and even though we are now a poor people, there should be no room for the despondency that has settled on large sections of the population.

What too few people mention when discussing crime is the degree to which concentrated poverty, hopelessness and despair are the chambermaids of violence and incivility.

Jamaica's a country of great dichotomy. On the one hand you have a tourist industry with great beaches and resorts, but on the other you have such great poverty and the violence that goes along with that.

In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.

I may not remember the name of a book's author, but let it be clear, what I will not forget is the violence, the poverty and the desperation that Mexico is living through.

Knife crime and gun crime is poverty-driven, and poverty leads to insecurity.

We have ministers who are incapable of doing what has been ordered from above because there is no follow up, because there are no consequences. If you are poor man and you steal, your hand is cut off after three offences. But if you are a rich man, nobody will say anything to you.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

History is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes

Every year, I hear about Thanksgiving. Who do one give thanks to? ... And who is giving thanks? What are they giving thanks for? For lots of poverty that's on the earth and lots of war that is a-rumoring all over the earth? For lots of people who die daily and the crime that multiply?

Our criminal justice system is failing all of us. It is not keeping us safe. It is contributing to a vicious cycle of crime and punishment.

I think it's criminal the way poverty is allowed to flourish.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor in America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

I just want people to see what I deem as a war for no reason, but only for greed.

Poverty and War have no excuse.

The best way to perpetuate poverty is spending on arms, and poverty itself is a form of violence. The wealthy industrialized countries have been too slow to recognize this. I hope that in this new century and new millennium, the world will learn that if you want peace, you must prepare for peace, plan for peace, work for it, and comply with its dictates. Lasting peace will never be achieved with the instruments of war.

Even strong as they are today, rich countries should have no illusion: nobody is safe in aworld of injustices.War will never bring security.War can only generate monsters: bitterness, intolerance, fundamentalism, and the damaging denial of current hegemonies.The poor must be given reasons to live, not to kill or die.