Madalyn Murray O'Hair Quotes

All this could go tomorrow, and I would still know how to function, because I never had nothing before. I went through the struggle - it was a rough life.

Hope is the poor man's bread.

I know exactly what it's like to not have a penny. I know exactly what it's like trying to get a job. I know exactly what it's like having bloody one tin of Ambrosia left in the cupboard. But I know I can survive.

Two days after moving we recommended ourselves to God, Our Lord, and fled, hoping that, although it was late in the season and the fruits of the tunas were giving out, by remaining in the field we might still get over a good portion of the land.

The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.

I had to steal to survive.

For a long time, I couldn't even afford food and clothing. I climbed from the very bottom of the society.

I have lost everything, and I am so poor now that I really cannot afford to let anything worry me.

I was broke for more than 10 years. I remember staying up all night one night at my first company and looking in couch cushions the next morning for some change to buy coffee.

When I was growing up in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, I sold doughnuts, popcorn and Kool Aid every day after school so that my family had some money and I could pay my school fees. It was a tough life.

A scene of misery and gloomy despair of a community of people who have been plunged abruptly from prosperity to a complete want of the most essential things of life.

My mother emigrated from Russia as a young child. She couldn't speak English and had no education. Her father died at age 32, leaving the family destitute. An uncle, who worked as a carpenter, supported the family.

It would be nice if we redefined what we meant by 'war story.' If you're making $15,000 a year living in a certain area of Portland, trying to make it with three kids and no husband, that's a kind of war.

I've always been the person to look at any turmoil as temporary. I recall times where my mom was working five and six jobs, and there's still no food in the house.

Living in Flint, poverty is an obstacle that you have to fight through. I always had to fend for my brother and sister - I was always the one to sacrifice my meals so that they could eat.

I can go back to poverty if a situation comes. I have sailed through the worst days of my life, and I am prepared for any crisis.

We had to leave Norway and go where it was all happening, which was London. We loved it there, but it was hard. We had no money - we were literally starving. It started to get ugly.

There was a time when I had nothing. I lost everything.

When things are scary, or there's a struggle, I always think, 'How is this going to sound in my biography?' Sometimes I would just be living on protein shakes or the cheapest food that I could afford because I didn't have a lot of money.

The fight to make ends meet, keeps a man upon his feet.

Poverty ennobles no one; it brutalizes common people and makes them hungry and old.

When we were growing up, we were so poor that our heritage was the only thing we had. Mama would say, 'Kids, pour more water in the soup. Better days are coming.'

Life on a lifeboat isn't much of a life. It is like an end game in chess, a game with a few pieces. The elements couldn't be more simple, nor the stakes higher. Physically it is extraordinarily arduous, and morally it is killing...You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish

What can we give a child when there is nothing left?