The negro is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.
The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.
Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious.
They Have Money For War But Can't Feed The Poor.
New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.
Blacks are about seven times more likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty than whites.
When ordinary people wake up, elites begin to tremble in their boots.
Ensnared in his starvation, Chaplin-man is always just below political awareness. A strike is a catastrophe for him because it threatens a man truly blinded by his hunger; this man achieves an awareness of the working-class condition only when the poor man and the proletarian coincide under the gaze (and the blows) of the police.
The key to understanding the rise in inequality isn't technology or globalization. It's the power of the moneyed interests to shape the underlying rules of the market.
My family comes from Panama, and I grew up in a single parent household with my mother, who barely spoke English. She couldn't get a good job, yet there were four of us for her to raise.
There is not a more dangerous experiment than to place property in the hands of one class, and political power in those of another... If property cannot retain the political power, the political power will draw after it the property.
I feel terrible about corporate greed. Growing up in a household that was a little more humble and didn't put so much emphasis on money and material goods, I think I have a pretty good head on my shoulders.
Poor is the new black.
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.
The kingdom of Bhutan replaced standard economic measures with measures of happiness as long ago as 1972. Yet Bhutan’s G.D.P. per head is still one of the lowest in the world, life expectancy is relatively low and infant mortality high, so it is easy to see why the king would not want anyone to mention the economy.
I was an anomaly because my father was a Harvard man, and he came from a family of poor people.
Black people in America, people from the struggle, immigrants, it's no generational wealth that we are attached to, so we are tasked to create - in one generation - closing the gap. That's why we so Doomsday about getting to the check: 'cause it's life or death for real.
How do we make sure that rising tides lift all boats and not just the yachts?
If we provide quality education to one generation, poverty will automatically be eradicated from society.
We still have an underclass in this country who are constantly ignored and vilified.
What hurts me most is poverty, and that's what led me to become a rebel.
There's a very big gulf between the black civil rights leadership in America and the black middle class in America. The black middle class are conservative. Many of those minorities can be persuaded to be members of the Republican Party.
Poverty is a plague against which humanity must fight without cease.
Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.
There are levels of poverty in South Africa that are totally unacceptable.
