Poor Quotes

Give me your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
- written on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

Related topics: Inspirational Government Political Generosity Compassion Kindness

If the misery of the poor be caused
not by the laws of nature,
but by our institutions,
great is our sin.
- Charles Darwin

Outer show is a poor substitute for inner worth.
- Aesop

Who, being loved, is poor?
- Oscar Wilde

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Give to your relatives, and to the needy, and to travelers.
Do not squander your wealth in wantonness.
- Quran 17:26

It is not the man who has too little,
but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

When life is too easy for us, we must beware
or we may not be ready to meet the blows
which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

No one has ever become poor by giving.
- Anne Frank

Far better is it to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though chequered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits
who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the grey twilight
that knows not victory or defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt

We are rich only through what we give,
and poor only through what we refuse.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us touch the dying, the poor,
the lonely and the unwanted
according to the graces we have received
and let us not be ashamed
or slow to do the humble work.
- Mother Teresa

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colors.
I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and
am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.
- Winston Churchill

Jesus preached more and taught more
about helping the poor and the sick and the hungry
than he did about heaven and hell.
Shouldn't that tell us something?
- John Grisham

I try to give to the poor people for love
what the rich could get for money.
No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds;
yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
- Mother Teresa

A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
- W. C. Fields

I love this work I do.
It's a privilege to serve the poor.
- Bono

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself.
Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor
for helping us to love God better because of them.
- Mother Teresa

Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike.
Each has their suffering.
Some suffer too much, others too little.
- The Buddha

You have made people listen.
You have made people care, and you have taught us
that whether we are poor or prosperous,
we have only one world to share.
You have taught young people that
they do have the power to change the world.
- Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, to Bono. (November 1999)

It is only the poor who pay cash,
and that not from virtue,
but because they are refused credit.
- Anatole France

The Moon Cannot Be Stolen:
A thief entered the little hut of a Zen Master,
but discovered there was nothing to steal.
The Zen Master discovered the thief.
"You have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler,
"and you should not return empty-handed.
Please take my clothes as a gift."
The thief was bewildered,
but he took the clothes and slunk away.
The Zen Master sat naked, watching the moon.
"Poor fellow," he mused,
"I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon."
- Traditional Zen Koan

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The man who says he is willing to meet you halfway
is usually a poor judge of distance.
- Laurence J. Peter

The Christian missionary may preach the gospel
to the poor naked heathen,
but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe
have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.
- Carl Jung

Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor,
it cannot save the few who are rich.
- John F. Kennedy

I have found out in later years that we were very poor,
but the glory of America is that we didn't know it then.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Experience demands that man is
the only animal which devours his own kind,
for I can apply no milder term to
the general prey of the rich on the poor.
- Thomas Jefferson

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly
that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.
- Albert Einstein

A free America... means just this:
individual freedom for all, rich or poor,
or else this system of government we call democracy
is only an expedient to enslave man
to the machine and make him like it.
- Frank Lloyd Wright

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
- inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand
my complaint about them not understanding me.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Stop holding on to the past.
Release your regrets about whatever you may have done
or failed to do that turned out poorly.
Forgive others for whatever they may have done
or failed to do that cause you harm.
Declare today to be a new beginning.
Let go of the past and move on with creating
a joyful new future for yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

People only see what they are prepared to see.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People that seem so glorious are all show;
underneath they are like everyone else.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To the people who love you,
you are beautiful already.
This is not because they're
blind to your shortcomings
but because they so clearly see your soul.
- Victoria Moran

Fear defeats more people than
any other one thing in the world.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

To go against the dominant thinking of your friends,
of most of the people you see every day,
is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform.
- Theodore H. White

You can't stop the music, nobody can stop the music.
- Village People

People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget
how you made them feel.
- Maya Angelou

Knowing your own darkness is the best method
for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
- Carl Jung

A common denominator of all religions is that
they have the power to bring out the best and the worst in people.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Whenever you're in conflict with someone,
there is one factor that can make the difference
between damaging your relationship and deepening it.
That factor is attitude.
- William James

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
- Mother Teresa

When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything,
I still believe that people are really good at heart.
- Anne Frank

Worthless people live only to eat and drink;
people of worth eat and drink only to live.
- Socrates

Opportunity is missed by most people
because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand;
they listen with the intent to reply.
- Stephen R. Covey

I believe that everything happens for a reason.
People change so that you can learn to let go,
things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right,
you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself,
and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.
- Marilyn Monroe

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles;
but today it means getting along with people.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

What people say, what people do,
and what they say they do
are entirely different things.
- Margaret Mead

The most successful people in life
are generally those who have the best information.
- Benjamin Disraeli

The great pleasure in life is doing
what people say you cannot do.
- Walter Bagehot

Be a yardstick of quality.
Some people aren't used to an environment
where excellence is expected.
- Steve Jobs

In matters of truth and justice,
there is no difference between large and small problems,
for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
- Albert Einstein

If only the people who worry about their liabilities
would think about the riches they do possess,
they would stop worrying.
- Dale Carnegie

It is only in adventure that some people
succeed in knowing themselves -
in finding themselves.
- Andre Gide

Many people allow their need
for other people's approval to control their lives.
They spend their lives worrying about what others think of them.
- Rick Warren

We work with the people not out of pity
but out of respect for their potential for growth and development,
both as individuals and as communities.
- Jimmy Yen

If a million people say a foolish thing,
it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France

Motivation is the art of getting people to do
what you want them to do because they want to do it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Most people don't CHOOSE their value system -
they simply inherit the beliefs of their parents and community.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There are three classes of people:
those who see,
those who see when they are shown,
those who do not see.
- Leonardo da Vinci

What old people say you cannot do,
you try and find that you can.
Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.
- Henry David Thoreau

Most of the important things in the world
have been accomplished by people
who have kept on trying
when there seemed to be no hope at all.
- Dale Carnegie

The meeting of two personalities is
like the contact of two chemical substances:
if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
- Carl Jung

Instead of worrying about what people say of you,
why not spend time trying to accomplish
something they will admire.
- Dale Carnegie

By not caring too much about what people think,
I'm able to think for myself
and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular.
And I succeed.
- Albert Ellis

Ordinary people seem not to realize
that those who really apply themselves
in the right way to philosophy
are directly and of their own accord
preparing themselves for dying and death.
- Socrates

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie