Penny Lernoux Quotes

I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago 's South Side.

Rural communities in Africa, South Asia and Latin America are where the majority of hungry people are and the inequality that exists between women and men in these communities is holding back progress. These women have a very tough time, so much is expected of them.

If you've seen one city slum you've seen them all.

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing.

One of the things that struck me when I came to the U.S. was discovering American poverty.

It's the people without the money and the power, who desperately want to live, for those people small things aren't small at all.

Now some folks say that we should be glad for what we have. Tell me, would you be happy in Village Ghetto Land?

One thing that you consistently see everywhere is that the poor and the under-represented are always the ones who are going to suffer the most and get the short end of the stick.

There are places that are thriving in America that don't need very much help, and then there are places where people feel so discouraged and so left behind, like nobody cares about them. And I want to try to help there.

But the most horrible spot .... lies....immediately south west of Oxford Road and is known as Little Ireland. The race that lives in these ruinous cottages, behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten door-posts, or in dark, wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench....must surely have reached the lowest stage of humanity.

It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor.

[President Johnson] had the political will to say that having one in five Americans living in the kind of abject conditions their fellow citizens associated with Third World countries and the novels of Dickens was as dangerous as any battlefield enemy.

Being poor in Africa is something people in America can't relate to. Part of the challenge is bringing that reality to people and moving them. You have to arouse compassion.

Poverty is the openmouthed relentless hell which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is hell enough.

Poor people always lose in struggles.

Parts of the United States are taking on a Third World look.

America has a broken spirit, that the people that are saying, "Please help me, please let me keep my home, please let me keep my car, please recognize me as a vital human being," they are falling on deaf ears.

The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.

Hey, baby, nobody suffers like the poor.

The children of the poor are so apt to look as if the rich would have been over-blest with such! Alas for the angel capabilities, interrupted so soon with care, and with after life so sadly unfulfilled.

It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

There is nothing that will discombobulate and degrade [more] the lives of people near the margin on this planet. You don't have to look much past New Orleans to see that. Who took the hit? Some of the poorest people in the U.S.

Necessity is the constant scourge of the lower classes, ennui of the higher ones.

When I find too many puzzles about the way explanations are given about why there is inequality - why people who work the hardest in the world end up being the poorest - I can't just sit back and not try to understand why the gaps between people are increasing, or why there are so many homeless and hungry people in the world.