Poverty Risk Quotes

My mother was born into a solidly middle-class family, but, as all too many Americans understand, everything doesn't always go as planned - no matter how hard you work. She died on welfare. Without the support of the state, I shudder to think of where we would have ended up.

As Secretary of Housing, I do have to express alarm, signal the alarm if you will, that the potential for homelessness to grow is there.

On the other end of the spectrum, these women who do live long enough to collect Social Security face the challenge of being disproportionately dependent on the Social Security system for retirement income.

The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s given the freedom to starve anywhere.

If you're a single mother with two children, which is the toughest job in America as far as I'm concerned, and you're working hard to put food on your family.

Being a writer is a rather hazardous occupation and there is a horribly high rate of writers who barely have the money for the paper and pen they use for their craft.

Graduating from high school is certainly a good idea, but it's no longer much protection against poverty.

Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony.

Child care can almost bankrupt a family, even a two-parent household in which both parents are working. That keeps a parent from being at ease and it really stifles the social and economic growth of a family. Women are hit hard across the board, but particularly in homes where the mother is the head of the household and the only wage-earner. It hurts her, and it hurts her children.

I had a good personal relationship with Lee Kuan Yew and I used him, in the sense, that he... He made a statement in 1980, and he said in that statement that, "If Australia keeps going the way it is, it will finish up the poor, white trash of Asia." And he was right, because we were just going backwards.

If bad and inexperienced politicians control power in Nigeria, my wealth may turn into poverty, and I am not ready to become a poor man.

Is it rather a country that tramples upon your rights, disdains your cries and insults your distresses? Have you not, more than once, suggested your wishes, and made known your wants to Congress? Wants and wishes which gratitude and policy should have anticipated, rather than evaded. And have you not lately, in the meek language of entreating memorials, begged from their justice, what you would no longer expect from their favour? How have you been answered? Let the letter which you are called to consider tomorrow make reply. If this, then, be your treatment, while the swords you wear are necessary for the defense of America, what have you to expect from peace, when your voice shall sink, and your strength dissipate by division? When those very swords, the instruments and companions of your glory, shall be taken from your sides, and no remaining mark of military distinction left but your wants, infirmities and scars? Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution, and retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity, which has hitherto been spent in honor?

If women have young children, they are one man away from welfare.

If you're one car accident away from poverty, you're on a high wire without a safety net. And that's a challenging proposition.

The odds are so against me, one mom and eight kids.

Many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and are only one step away from being homeless. Whether you are white, black, Latino, or Asian, we have to be there to help pick each other up.

The price of indulging yourself in your youth in the things you cannot afford is poverty and dependence in your old age.