Perception of Poverty Quotes

Being poor is a frame of mind.

I never felt poor. Our family euphemism was that we were broke, which I think psychologically gave you a different feeling. There were people far worse than we were.

Poor is a state of mind. Broke is, 'I'm just passing through.'

Being poor is a state of mind, not a condition.

I live in New York full time. I can't live in L.A., because I fear people think I'm a vagrant there. If you show up in L.A. with your shirt inside out or socks mismatched, people start putting change in your cup.

Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.

The poor are only they who feel poor.

I think we start suffering as soon as we come out of the womb. I think that people tend to stereotype. When they think of suffering, they think of abuse - physical abuse, emotional abuse, poverty, that kind of thing. There's different levels of suffering. I don't think that it has to do with how much money you have - if you were raised in the ghetto or the Hamptons. For me it's more about perception: self-perception and how you perceive the world.

You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.

Poverty is only contemptible when it is felt to be so. Doubtless the best way to make our poverty respectable is to seem never to feel it as an evil.