These poor quotes will inspire you. Poor, having little money or few possessions or worse than is usual, expected, or desirable; of a low or inferior standard or quality.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging poor quotes, poor sayings, and poor proverbs.
Best Poor Quotes
- “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
- “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment.” ~ Henry Hazlitt
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“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.” ~ John F. Kennedy
- “If a man has an apartment stacked to the ceiling with newspapers, we call him crazy. If a woman has a trailer house full of cats, we call her nuts. But when people pathologically hoard so much cash that they impoverish the entire nation, we put them on the cover of Fortune magazine and pretend that they are role models.” ~ Lester B. Pearson
- “There are only three ways by which any individual can get wealth — by work, by gift or by theft. And, clearly, the reason why the workers get so little is that the beggars and thieves get so much.” ~ Henry George
- “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.” ~ Gautama Buddha
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“Poverty is the worst form of violence.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
- “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” ~ Robert Kiyosaki
- “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.” ~ Nelson Mandela
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“Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.” ~ Oliver Goldsmith
- “Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving!” ~ O. Henry , Poor quotes love
- “Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
- “It is easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing, that’s the Lord’s test.” ~ Mahalia Jackson
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“Among our tasks as witnesses to the love of Christ is that of giving a voice to the cry of the poor.” ~ Pope Francis
- “In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.” ~ P. J. O’Rourke
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“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” ~ Mother Teresa
- “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
- “Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.” ~ Nicolas Chamfort
- “Rich honesty dwells like a miser, Sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in your foul oyster.” ~ William Shakespeare
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“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” ~ George S. Patton
- “The influential man is the successful man, whether he be rich or poor.” ~ Orison Swett Marden
- “Keeping books on social aid is capitalistic nonsense. I just use the money for the poor. I can’t stop to count it.” ~ Evita Peron
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“Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” ~ Henry Ford
- “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?” ~ William Shakespeare
- “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
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“There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.” ~ Seneca the Younger
- “Poverty consist in feeling poor.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.” ~ Robert Motherwell
- “Poor people choose to play the role of the victim.” ~ T. Harv Eker
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“Give me, Lord, neither poverty nor riches.” ~ William Cobbett
- “If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” ~ Charles Darwin
- “But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” ~ William Butler Yeats
- “We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition” ~ William James , Poor quotes life
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“Being poor is a state of mind, not a condition.” ~ Alphonso Jackson
- “Happiness and suffering do not depend on being poor or rich, they depend on having the right or wrong understanding in our mind.” ~ Ajahn Chah
- “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “Who, being loved, is poor?” ~ Oscar Wilde
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“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” ~ Aristotle
- “Once poverty is gone, we’ll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They’ll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society – how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.” ~ Muhammad Yunus , Poor quotes people
- “Whatever results you’re getting, be they rich or poor, good or bad, positive or negative, always remember that your outer world is simply a reflection of your inner world. If things aren’t going well in your outer life, it’s because things aren’t going well in your inner life. It’s that simple.” ~ T. Harv Eker
- “Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it is.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
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“Poor and content is rich and rich enough.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “I believe that, as long as there is plenty, poverty is evil.” ~ Robert Kennedy
- “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” ~ Emma Lazarus
- “O ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease.” ~ Bahá’u’lláh
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“I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.” ~ Thomas B. Macaulay
- “It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them.” ~ Bill Vaughan
- “There, poor sinner, take my garment, and put it on; you shall stand before God as if you were Christ, and I will stand before God as if I had been the sinner; I will suffer in the sinner’s stead, and you shall be rewarded for works that you did not do, but which I did for you.” ~ Charles Spurgeon
- “For every talent that poverty has stimulated it has blighted a hundred.” ~ John W. Gardner
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“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” ~ Sholom Aleichem
- “I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.” ~ Neil Gaiman
- “As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.” ~ Oscar Wilde
- “Poverty entails fear and stress and sometimes depression. It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships.” ~ J. K. Rowling
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“Hunger makes a thief of any man.” ~ Pearl S. Buck
- “Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty; what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “What power can poverty have over a home where loving hearts are beating with a consciousness of untold riches of the head and heart?” ~ Orison Swett Marden
- “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” ~ Confucius
- “Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
