200 Poor Quotes

After our recent exploration of Class, Culture, and Income (and how those factors may have influenced our pasts and our present thoughts/beliefs/ dreams—and, most likely, will also affect our futures as well), it’s time to take another break from our series.

Today, I present the Poor Quotes. Next time, I’ll provide the Rich Quotes. Understandably, there’s some overlap between these two topics.

I started learning the English language and American culture when I was five years old, mostly from school, but also from self-study using mostly dictionaries. I diligently looked up all the hard words and strove to memorize not only their correct numerous meanings but also their perfect pronunciation, spelling, and various usage. After all, my entire family was relying on me to learn both the language and culture well enough to interpret and explain everything to them and to teach all of that to my sisters, too.

The strange thing I discovered is that sometimes what I initially thought were the most simple words turned out to be the most complicated. “Poor” and “rich” are two such examples. You will see from the quotes below (and those posted next time) that far more learned persons than me can and do strongly disagree about what these two seemingly plain, garden variety basic words mean or should mean.

Whatever you take away from any of these quotes, remember one thing: The future is not written in stone. If you grew up poor/broke, use it as inspiration to become rich or free from money worries! Feel proud of your humble upbringings if you can. If you can’t feel good about it, at least don’t be ashamed of it. All of your experiences helped make you exactly the way you are; and, you are wonderful! You can do great things! Give your past a fresh look to see what strengths, wisdom, and special insights you gained from it. If you really can’t find anything positive about your past, then leave it behind you, and keep moving forward. Just be glad you’re still alive! One of my favorite quotes is “Any day above ground is a good day!” Why? ‘Cause that’s one more day you can go for it and maybe get it at last!

200 QUOTES ABOUT POVERTY

1. Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth.
- Aesop

2. Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
- Sholom Aleichem

3. Written laws are like spiders’ webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.
- Anacharsis

4. I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes—it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, “well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,” that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, “I’m sorry,” and then you say to yourself, “I’m sorry.” If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.
- Maya Angelou

5. Sister, there were people who went to sleep last night, poor and rich and white and black, but they will never wake again. And those dead folks would give anything at all for just five minutes of this weather or ten minutes of plowing. So you watch yourself about complaining. What you’re supposed to do when you don’t like a thing is change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.
- Maya Angelou

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

7. Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
- Francis Bacon

8. Pride in the case of a rich man is bad, but pride in the case of a poor man is worse.
- Abu Bakr

9. Men who are scandalized at the lack of freedom in Russia do not ask themselves how real is liberty among the poor, the weak, and the ignorant in capitalist society.
- Emily G. Balch

10. Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
- James A. Baldwin

11. Poor people cannot rely on the government to come to help you in times of need. You have to get your education. Then nobody can control your destiny.
- Charles Barkley

12. It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick.
- Dave Barry

13. No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
- Henry Ward Beecher

14. You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
- Henry Ward Beecher

15. The real solution is to improve the incomes of the poor and provide their children with decent education.
- Carol Bellamy

16. Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
- Walter Benjamin

17. Poverty is the step-mother of genius.
- Josh Billings

18. Poverty is everyone’s problem. It cuts across any line you can name: age, race, social, geographic or religious. Whether you are black or white; rich, middle-class or poor, we are ALL touched by poverty.
- Kathleen Blanco

19. The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

20. Money is a good servant, but a poor master.
- Dominique Bouhours

21. Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.
- Bertolt Brecht

22. Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.
- Gerald Brenan

23. I would not send a poor girl into the world, ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself.
- Anne Bronte

24. He who hesitates is poor.
- Mel Brooks

25. The rich don’t exploit the poor. They just out-compete them.
- David Brooks

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

27. If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
- Edmund Burke

28. You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.
- Albert Camus

29. 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

30. Life is painful. It’s the one experience that unites rich and poor.
- Truman Capote

31. I did it to myself. It wasn’t society … it wasn’t a pusher, it wasn’t being blind or being black or being poor. It was all my doing.
- Ray Charles

32. Who gets the risks? The risks are given to the consumer, the unsuspecting consumer and the poor work force. And who gets the benefits? The benefits are only for the corporations, for the money makers.
- Cesar Chavez

33. Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I’ve been poor when I was in China … As kids we never had to starve, but just didn’t have enough meat, enough rice.
- Joan Chen

34. I’m scared to death of being poor. It’s like a fat girl who loses 500 pounds but is always fat inside. I grew up poor and will always feel poor inside. It’s my pet paranoia.
- Cher

35. The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
- Gilbert K. Chesterton

36. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, and which shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime “let out all the length of all the reins.”
- Mary Cholmondeley

37. I was very poor. As a child my dream was to have a leather football.
- Steven Chow

38. Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of “speculation”; but which ought to be called Gambling.
- William Cobbett

39. To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.
- William Cobbett

40. I decided, if I’m going to be poor and black and all, the least thing I’m going to do is to try and find out who I am. I created everything about me.
- Ornette Coleman

41. A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.
- Colette

42. Poor but happy is not a phrase invented by a poor person.
- Mason Cooley

43. I was poor. When you’re poor you work, and when you’re rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.
- Imogin Cunningham

44. We weren’t wealthy but we definitely weren’t poor. We were incredibly rich because there was a wonderful community in Shepherd’s Bush, where I grew up. All my friends were into villainy and crime.
- Roger Daltry

45. I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the people that I knew growing up, and this was, for the most part, poor people who had extraordinary dreams but also very amazing obstacles.
- Edwidge Danticat

46. I’ve always been driven by the concept of equal justice under the law, but only the rich can pay great sums of money for legal assistance and that puts them at an advantage over the poor.
- Samuel Dash

47. I was very poor and I was a waitress, and it’s hard to be a poor waitress in New York.
- Kristen Davis

48. By desiring little, a poor man makes himself rich.
- Democritus

49. They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?
- Princess Diana

50. It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.
- Charles Dickens

51. He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust;
He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.
- Emily Dickinson

52. A great artist is never poor.
- Isak Dinesen

53. 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

54. And plenty makes us poor.
- John Dryden

55. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
- W.E.B. Du Bois

56. When you’re really poor, everything you see is something you can’t have.
- Patrick Duncan

57. One of the strangest things about life is that the poor, who need the money the most, are the ones that never have it.
- Finley Peter Dunne

58. Some have too much, yet still do crave;
I little have, and seek no more.
They are but poor, though much they have,
And I am rich with little store.
- Edward Dyer

59. The poor man wishes to conceal his poverty, and the rich man his wealth: the former fears lest he be despised, the latter lest he be plundered.
- Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

60. Poverty consists in feeling poor.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

62. I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I’m not ashamed of anything.
- Eminem

63. If you live according to nature, you will never be poor;if you live according to opinions, you will never be rich.
- Epicurus

64. The petty economies of the rich are
just as amazing as the silly extravagances of the poor.
- William Feather

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

66. A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
- Henry Ford

67. A poor man is not the one without a cent. A poor man is the one without a dream.
- Henry Ford

68. When I was a kid in Houston, we were so poor we couldn’t afford the last 2 letters, so we called ourselves po’.
- George Foreman

69. I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.
- Anatole France

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

71. Content makes poor men rich; discontent makes rich men poor.
- Benjamin Franklin

72. Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it is.
- Benjamin Franklin

73. The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.
- James Anthony Froude

74. He is poor indeed that can promise nothing.
- Thomas Fuller

75. Poor men’s reasons are not heard.
- Thomas Fuller

76. 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

77. The walls are the publishers of the poor.
- Eduardo Galeano

78. 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.
- James A. Garfield

79. The best way to help poor people is to not be one of them.
- Bob Harrington

80. Clothes make the poor invisible. America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known.
- Michael Harrington

81. To be remembered after we are dead is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living.
- William Hazlitt

82. I know that a man who shows me his wealth is like the beggar who shows me his poverty; they are both looking for alms from me, the rich man for the alms of my envy, the poor man for the alms of my guilt.
- Ben Hecht

83. If you’re poor and you do something stupid, you’re nuts. If you’re rich and do something stupid, you’re eccentric.
- Bobby Heenan

84. Poverty in itself does not make men into a rabble; a rabble is created only when there is joined to poverty a disposition of mind, an inner indignation against the rich, against society, against the government.
- George Hegel

85. You lose your manners when you’re poor.
- Lillian Hellman

86. Poverty must have many satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor people.
- Don Herold

87. False shame accompanies a man that is poor, shame that either harms a man greatly or profits him; shame is with poverty, but confidence with wealth.
- Hesiod

88. The wealth of the country, its capital, its credit, must be saved from the predatory poor as well as the predatory rich, but above all from the predatory politician.
- James J. Hill

89. Money is human kind’s greatest invention. Money doesn’t discriminate. Money doesn’t care whether a person is poor, whether a person comes from a good family, or what his skin color is. Anybody can make money.
- Takafumi Horie

90. Beauty is only skin deep, but it’s a valuable asset if you’re poor or haven’t any sense.
- Vernon Howard

91. It is no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.
- Kin Hubbard

92. It’s such a Bore Being always Poor.
- Langston Hughes

93. My father was unemployed, and I was the eldest of seven children. We were very poor. And, when you ask, how did we support ourselves, the only funding that we had was unemployment payments.
- John Hume

94. 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

95. It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were, men wouldn’t be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.
- Jerome K. Jerome

96. Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
- Samuel Johnson

97. To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches; and, therefore, every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others and his idleness from himself.
- Samuel Johnson

98. Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
- Samuel Johnson

99. Without frugality none can be rich; and, with it very few would be poor.
- Samuel Johnson

100. In Africa, we were around thousands of people who have seen a lot of poverty, but they were fun at the end of the day.
- Angelina Jolie

101. There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure.
- Barbara Jordan

102. The poor man is not he who is without a cent, but he who is without a dream.
- Harry Kemp

103. Whether we are poor among the poorest, or less poor among the wealthier, let us stand proud and noteworthy, united and strong, comforted by our belonging to the Community of the Free Nations of our Planet.
- Mathieu Kerekou

104. You don’t seem to realize that a poor person who is unhappy is in a better position than a rich person who is unhappy. Because the poor person has hope. He thinks money would help.
- Jean Kerr

105. Hatred, intolerance, poor hygienic conditions, and violence all have roots in illiteracy, so we’re trying to do something to help the poor and the needy.
- Abdul Qadeer Khan

106. I felt like a loser. I was unhappy as a child most of the time. We were terribly poor, and I hated my size.
- Don Knotts

107. The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
- Willem de Koonig

108. You need massive recruitment to tell the poorest of the poor what is possible.
- Jonathan Kozol

109. It’s easy to have principles when you’re rich. The important thing is to have principles when you’re poor.
- Ray Kroc

110. My parents were so poor when I was a kid, I never went anywhere. I take our youngsters with us because I don’t know anything that teaches them so much.
- Alan Ladd

111. The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead.
- Ann Landers

112. Few, save the poor, feel for the poor.
- Letitia Landon

113. I wasn’t born in a log cabin, but my family moved into one as soon as they could afford it.
- Melville D. Landon

114. Making the best of things is … a damn poor way of dealing with them. My whole life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand.
- Rose Wilder Lane

115. Any kid who has two parents who are interested in him and has a houseful of books isn’t poor.
- Sam Levenson

116. Show me a man with very little money and I will show you a bum.
- Joe E. Lewis

117. Traditionally the great men of our country have sprung from poor environments; that being so, it would appear we have long suffered from a severe lack of poverty.
- Gerald F. Lieberman

118. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
- Abraham Lincoln

119. It would be nice to say the rich people, the fancy people, all behaved like bastards and the poor slobs all came through like heroes. But, as a matter of fact, sometimes the poor slobs behave like slobs and the great, noble, privileged characters come off very well, indeed.
- Walter Lord

120. Everybody I talk to, black or white, suburban, rich or poor, can relate to rejection, can relate to not having a father or a mother.
- Derek Luke

121. I would rather be poor in a cottage full of books than a king without the desire to read.
- Thomas Babbington Macaulay

122. Poor is the man whose pleasures depend on the permission of another.
- Madonna

123. I gained direct knowledge of the life of the poor in big towns: I have lived the narrowing mechanism of its conditioning and feared it.
- Ella Maillart

124. The influential man is the successful man, whether he be rich or poor.
- Orison Swett Marden

125. I would rather write for the instruction, or even the amusement, of the poor than for the amusement of the rich.
- Frederick Marryat

126. The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor.
- H. L. Mencken

127. I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.
- Michelangelo

128. He who knows how to be poor knows everything.
- Jules Michelet

129. Though I be poor, I’m honest.
- Thomas Middleton

130. The universe lies before you on the floor, in the air, in the mysterious bodies of your dancers, in your mind. From this voyage no one returns poor or weary.
- Agnes de Mille

131. We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.
- Henry Miller

132. My parents were very poor; but, we never felt any sense of need or want. It was a very close, loving, tightly-knit family growing up; and, I never felt any sense of deprivation or anything like that.
- George J. Mitchell

133. It is the mind that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
- Michel de Montaigne

134. I don’t think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they’re black or poor. The question is not morality, the question is money. That’s what we’re upset about.
- Toni Morrison

135. It is the lash of hunger which compels the poor man to submit. In order to live he must sell—“voluntarily” sell—himself every day and hour to the “beast of property.”
- Johann Most

136. Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it!
- Robert Motherwell

137. Ask questions of the learned, speak with the wise, and associate with the poor.
- Muhammad

138. I enjoy my money, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’d certainly rather be rich than poor.
- Christine McVie

139. When you are young, poor and trying to find anything encouraging in your life, an adult telling you that you do something well gives you self-confidence and makes you look at yourself a little more positively.
- Graham Nash

140. As might be supposed, my parents were quite poor, but we somehow never seemed to lack anything we needed; and, I never saw a trace of discontent or a failure in cheerfulness over their lot in life, as indeed over anything.
- Albert J. Nock

141. I’m a very patriotic guy. I give a lot of speeches to kids as part of my Kick Drugs Out of America program and tell them how lucky they are to be raised in this country. You can start at the bottom—just as I did in a poor, single-parent family on welfare—and, with work and sacrifice, be successful.
- Chuck Norris

142. Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself … Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.
- Barack Obama

143. We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.
- Barack Obama

144. It’s hard to do it because you have got to look people in the eye and tell them they’re irresponsible and lazy. And who’s going to want to do that? Because that’s what poverty is, Ladies and Gentlemen. In this country (USA), you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period.
- Bill O’Reilley

145. Nowadays nothing but money counts: a fortune brings honors, friendships; the poor man everywhere lies low.
- Ovid

146. Poor people have more fun than rich people, they say; and I notice it’s the rich people who keep saying it.
- Jack Paar

147. I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it’s just depressing to me. The poor little kids.
- Dolly Parton

148. Humility and knowledge in poor clothes excel pride and ignorance in costly attire.
- William Penn

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

150. I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.
- Pablo Picasso

151. My father was a poor man, very poor in a British colonial possession where class and race were very important.
- Sidney Poitier

152. Conservatives divide the world in terms of good and evil while liberals do it in terms of the rich and poor.
- Dennis Prager

153. There are millions of children today who don’t attend school. However, education is the only way to get ahead in this country.
- Azim Premji

154. We need to make a game out of earning money. There is so much good we can do with money. Without it, we are bound and shackled and our choices become limited.
- Bob Proctor

155. Broke is normal. Why be normal?
- Dave Ramsey

156. After losing everything, I went on a quest to find out how money really works, how I could get control of it, and how I could have confidence in handling it.
- Dave Ramsey

157. 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

158. My father worked hard, but we were still very poor; and I didn’t want anybody arguing about money, so I became the entertainer—the one who wanted everyone to be happy. I didn’t want there to be any problems.
- Diana Ross

159. When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

160. The rich become richer and the poor become poorer is a cry heard throughout the whole civilized world.
- Friedrich Schiller

161. I grew up in a working class family where there was no health insurance. I saw first hand the fracturing of the American dream and the bitterness that comes when there is no hope and a lot of despair. So I wanted to build the company, in a sense, that my father never got a chance to work for.
- Howard Schultz

162. How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees?
- William Shakespeare

163. Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.
- William Shakespeare

164. If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes’ palaces.
- William Shakespeare

165. Lack of money is the root of all evil.
- George Bernard Shaw

166. 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

167. Very few people can afford to be poor.
- George Bernard Shaw

168. A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
- William Shenstone

169. The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
- Adam Smith

170. No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.
- Charles Spurgeon

171. If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need—go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help—the only ones.
- John Steinbeck

172. Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for future generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.
- Gloria Steinem

173. We might be on the brink of an apocalypse if, instead of poor people with suicide bombs killing middle class guys, middle-class people with suicide bombs started killing rich guys.
- Bruce Sterling

174. The men who start out with the notion that the world owes them a living generally find that the world pays its debt in the penitentiary or the poor house.
- William Graham Sumner

175. The fellow that has no money is poor. The fellow that has nothing but money is poorer still.
- William A. Sunday

176. The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
- William Temple

177. A poor man is like a foreigner in his own country.
- Ali ibn Ali Talib

178. 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

179. I don’t think people understand that being poor means you have to work from dawn until dusk just to survive through the day. I think there’s some notion that poor people lie about all day not doing anything.
- Emma Thompson

180. I’ve never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.
- Mike Todd

181. Substantive and procedural law benefits and protects landlords over tenants, creditors over debtors, lenders over borrowers, and the poor are seldom among the favored parties.
- John Turner

182. The tax collector must love poor people, he’s creating so many of them.
- Bill Vaughan

183. I think people really marry far too much; it is such a lottery after all, and for a poor woman a very doubtful happiness.
- Queen Victoria

184. There are no automatic links between poverty and terrorism. Among millions of poor people in the world, only a few turn to terrorism.
- Gijs de Vries

185. Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well.
- Denis Waitley

186. I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me, rich is better.
- Mae West

187. Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
- Oscar Wilde

188. Who, being loved, is poor?
- Oscar Wilde

189. Poverty is restriction; and, as such, it is the greatest injustice you can perpetrate upon yourself.
- Stuart Wilde

190. The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying, “Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.” She’s got a baseball bat and yelling, “You want a piece of me?”
- Robin Williams

191. Suffice it to say, I’m not poor.
- August Wilson

192. I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.
- Oprah Winfrey

193. I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.
- Oprah Winfrey

194. Ability is a poor man’s wealth.
- John Wooden

195. I would spread my clothes beneath your feet
But I am poor, and have no clothes.
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.
- William Butler Yeats

196. My experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith, an unshakable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue.
- Muhammad Yunus

197. I did something that challenged the banking world. Conventional banks look for the rich; we look for the absolutely poor. All people are entrepreneurs, but many don’t have the opportunity to find that out.
- Muhammad Yunus

198. I was lucky to come from a difficult area. It teaches you not just about football but also life. There were lots of kids from different races and poor families. People had to struggle to get through the day.
- Zinedine Zidane

199. I was discriminated against because I was Jewish, Italian, Black and Puerto Rican. But maybe the worst prejudice I experienced was against the poor. I grew up on welfare and often had to move in the middle of the night because we couldn’t pay the rent.
- Philip Zimbardo

200. My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college.
- Philip Zimbardo

CONCLUSION

There seems to be a big debate about whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing to stay poor as an adult (either by choice or by circumstances), whether it’s a state or condition that could have been avoided by any hardworking able American, and whether there is actually a difference between being “poor” and being “broke.”

I think I can at least settle the last of these three debates if we agree to accept the Dictionary.com definitions of these two words. The primary definition of “poor” is listed as “having little or no money, goods, or other means of support.” The primary definition of the adjective “broke” is “without money; penniless.” Hmm. Based on these definitions, it might be worse to be broke than to be poor because at least being poor means you might still have a little money, goods, or other means of support, but being broke means you don’t even have a penny! You see how confusing this can be? Whatever you want to call it, your lack of sufficient cash to feel safe about your future is no joke. But, it’s not a permanent condition unless you let it be. Have the courage to be rich! So, for next time, the Rich Quotes!

[Note: More poor quotes in the comments section below! : ) Rather than changing the title of this post—which would require changing all the links, too—I simply added the ones I found later while working on other quote lists.]

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[For “100 Money Quotes,” click here.]

[For “200 Rich Quotes,” click here.]

[For “200 Work Quotes,” click here.]

[For “200 Writing Quotes,” click here.]

[For “300 Entrepreneur Quotes,” click here.]

[For “100 Health Quotes,” click here.]

[For “100 Blessings Quotes,” click here.]

[For “300 Friendship Quotes,” click here.]

[For “200 Happiness Quotes,” click here.]

[For “200 Existence Quotes,” click here.]

[For “25 Statements to Happiness,” click here.]

[For all posts about different QUOTES, click here.]

[For more “Easy Steps to Success with Money,” click here.]