Ravachol Quotes

Unemployment is a great tragedy. The man who goes about hopelessly seeking work in order to earn bread for his children is a living reproach to civilization.

There is something about poverty that smells like death.

Poverty makes you wise but it's a curse.

… the unhappy Peasant cannot survive in his humble shelter; today pigswill is his only nourishment; what was once lavished on swine is now shared between man and beast. The People ask only for bread; they are even willing to pay for it with the sweat of their brows: at least let them eat it without watering it with tears.

We were poor, but we didn't know it. There were no government bureaus in those days presuming to determine where poorness begins and ends, but I don't remember ever being hungry.

I don't care if I starve.

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.

One-third of our people were dangerously ill, getting worse hourly, and we felt sure of meeting the same fate, with death as our only prospect, which in such a country was much worse yet.

Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.

There's this huge number of desperate people.

There was a point when I almost gave up. I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't feed my pets.

At my lowest I was making nothing, of course.

In 1843, everybody was hungry, unemployed, and conditions were very bad.

To see those babies with no food for three of four days, old people sitting in the hot sun, when you see these poor people, you cannot help but being compassionate or affected.

All the principal towns are sadly decayed, and instead of finding every mortal employed, you meet with multitudes of poor creatures who are starving in idleness.

Go to the streets and ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they don’t give you bread, then take it.

Whole families used to starve in their cabins without their plight being discovered until the stench of their decaying corpses attracted notice.

The awful phantom of the hungry poor.

I have lived poverty. I didn't choose it. No one would choose humiliation, pain, and rage.

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life - no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet - how can they be frustrated? They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes that something is going to happen - if not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; if not in this life then in the next life.

There are children in Africa, starving to death, and you don't hear them whinging.

What do you think this very difficult situation will push? Especially in the hearts of those who are facing the starvation, facing the unemployment, facing this siege, facing the tragedy of their families - the poverty of their families. Some of them, they didn't find food to eat. What do you expect from them? In spite of death, our people are still patient. But patience has limits.

We are lost, lost,' said Gollum. 'No name, no business, no Precious, nothing. Only empty. Only hungry; yes, we are hungry. A few little fishes, nasty bony little fishes, for a poor creature, and they say death. So wise they are; so just, so very just

Our chiefs are killed. . . . The little children are freezing to death. . . . My people have no blankets, no food. . . . My heart is sick and sad. . . . I will fight no more forever.

Loneliness and hunger were my fortunes of creation.