“America is an enormous frosted cupcake in the middle of millions of starving people.”
“Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
“Poverty is a wonderful thing. It sticks to a man after all his friends have forsaken him.”
“Hard as it may appear in individual cases, dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.”
“I wasn't born in a log cabin, but my family moved into one as soon as they could afford it.”
“Too poor for a bribe, and too proud to importune, he had not the method of making a fortune.”
“If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.”
“In going to America one learns that poverty is not a necessary accompaniment to civilization.”
“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”
“The rich become richer and the poor become poorer is a cry heard throughout the whole civilized world.”
“I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.”
“I want there to be no peasant in my kingdom so poor that he cannot have a chicken in his pot every Sunday.”
“I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation”
“As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.”
“One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.”
“Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.”
“Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.”
“When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint. When I asked why the poor were hungry, they called me a communist.”
“We are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet.”
“It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.”
“In a country well governed poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
“I have found out in later years that my family was very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn't know it. [On his childhood]”
“What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?”
“Do not ask the name of the person who seeks a bed for the night. He who is reluctant to give his name is the one who most needs shelter.”
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor, to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.”
“The hermit doesn't sleep at night, in love with the blue of the vacant moon. The cool of the breeze that rustles the trees rustles him too.”
“The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as ''Soho'' poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.”
“We have not yet reached the goal but.. we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation.”
“Poverty is uncomfortable; but 9 times out of 10 the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and be compelled to sink or swim.”