Escaping Poverty Quotes

I think the single biggest thing that money gave me-and obviously I came from a place where I was a single mother and it really was hand to mouth at one point. It was literally as poor as you can get in Britain without being homeless at one point. If you've ever been there you will never, ever take for granted that you don't need to worry. Never.

Growing up, I didn't dream of being nothing, of living in the ghetto my whole life. I wanted to get out.

Poverty urges us to do and suffer anything that we may escape from it, and so leads us away from virtue.

It must be poor life that achieves freedom from fear.

I was determined not to remain poor.

I know I didn't want to get caught up in the cycle of drugs and violence that was around me. Deep down inside, I felt there was something better outside the situation I was in.

The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip- the relative you cringe to kiss.

I'm living proof that you can make it out of the ghetto.

It's no secret that my family was very, very poor, and I don't want that for my life or my children's life certainly. But some might say I could relax a bit more and know that that's not going to happen to me. I'm not going to end up in a car.

Being in Birmingham, I thought I was going to be a gangster or a bag-runner or a thief. I heard music and I was determined to get out of there.

You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like 'I still go to the projects.' I'm like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it's so cool?

We lived in a ghetto. I could have pretended I was hard or tough and not a square. I wound up not getting in trouble. I don't consider myself to be especially wise, but I will say that it's pretty clear that some people want to get out and some people don't. I wanted out.

When you come from nothing, you're basically just trying to get escape velocity, which means you and your family don't have to worry about being broke and that's all I ever cared about.

Poor is a state of mind you never grow out of, but being broke is just a temporary condition.

The ladder was there, from the gutter to the university, and for those stalwart enough to ascend it, the schools were a boon and a path out of poverty.

My parents were nonmaterialistic. They believed that money without knowledge was worthless, that education tempered with religion was the way to climb out of poverty in America, and over the years they were proven right.

It's very difficult for a black man to get out of South-Central Los Angeles, and get out civilized....The only men I know who have escaped, all began reading Robert Heinlein at age ten.

If I didn't mould my reality then I'd still be in the ghetto where people like me are supposed to stay. You have to dream your way out of the nightmare.