Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Each one of us pray, day and night, for the downtrodden millions in India, who are held fast by poverty, priest craft, and tyranny - pray day and night for them. I am no meta physician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor, I love the poor.... Let these people be your God - think of them, work for them, pray for them incessantly - the Lord will show you the way.

Civil rights leaders are involved in helping poor people. That's what I've been doing all my life.

A calling is you feel - you look out and see the need - maybe it's the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it's the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was - felt called.

Being Christian towards poor people means trying to improve their lives and give them back some self-respect.

A servant church must have as its priority solidarity with the poor.

If I didn't like poor people, why would I come and tell them how to make their lives better?

We should remember the poor.

… poor people deserve access to food, education, housing, and medical services

If I am honored to serve as first lady, I will use that wonderful privilege to try to help people in our country who need it the most. One of the many causes dear to my heart is helping children and women.

I met children who want to be social workers, lawyers, doctors, community activists and soldiers so they can help their people rise above still difficult economic circumstances.

I want to see us push for economical and educational advancement in communities of color and low-income communities, and I want to see our relationships between our communities and our law enforcement be advanced.

To all people of good will who are working for social justice: never tire of working for a more just world, marked by greater solidarity!

A government is one that thinks and hears the voice of the poor. A government must live for the poor.

It is for the poor people's sake, above all, that we urgently need more unity and better organization and need to concentrate our reform efforts in order to really to achieve reforms, one by one.

One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.

Acting is one thing, but actually trying to change the world and the way people think to make people's lives better? That's the stuff I'm most proud of.

The impulse to share the lives of the poor, the desire to make social service, irrespective of propaganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as Christianity itself.

I was going to save the world, and I thought I would start with the African continent.

Quite often when you help poor people, they don't think about the environment. They think about survival.

I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter, and able to give people a clean drink of water. I don't want images of starving babies at the breast in my mind. I want that to change. And if I want that, I had better do something about it.

I think that before people were speaking much about the poor, but now more and more people are speaking to the poor. That is the great difference.

I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those core issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society.

I once heard somebody say that God had closed a door on an opportunity they had hoped for. But I've always wondered if when we want to do something that we know is right and good, God places that desire deep in our hearts because He wants it for us and it honors Him. Maybe there are times when we think a door has been closed and, instead of misinterpreting the circumstances, God wants us to kick it down. Or perhaps just sit outside of it long enough until somebody tells us we can come in.

Jesus teaches us to put the needs of the poor ahead of our own, our needs, even if legitimate, will never be so urgent as those of the poor, who lack the necessities of life.

I think just as armament had a major impact of a negative kind in the world, education is something which has a major impact of a positive kind in the world. And I think the American population, with its humanity and with its concern about the future of the world, has a real reason to think about what it can do to help the world in expanding education.