"You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer."
— Winston S. Churchill

"Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds."
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"You can’t save others from themselves because those who make a perpetual muddle of their lives don’t appreciate your interfering with the drama they’ve created. They want your poor-sweet-baby sympathy, but they don’t want to change."
— Sue Grafton (T is for Trespass)

"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

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"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." "
— W.B. Yeats

""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 (Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism)

"And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way."
— Angela Carter (Nights at the Circus)

"Mother Teresa would seek no other pulpit than the hovels of the poor, and no other sermon than her works of love, performed for the unloved, in God's name."
— Joseph Langford (Mother Teresa's Secret Fire: The Encounter that Changed Her Life and How It Can Transform Your Own)

"I would suggest that a feminism which does not also seek to alter the exploitation of poorer women is not feminism at all, but is simply a varient for of upper-class politics & self-privileging."
— Jack D. Forbes (Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism)

"Nevertheless, no matter how much they killed themselves with work, no matter how much money they eked out, and no matter how many schemes they thought of, their guardian angels were asleep with fatigue while they put in coins and took them out trying to get just
enough to live with.
"
— Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

"Joad said, "There's a guy in McAlester - lifer. He studies all the time. He's sec'etary of the warden - writed the warden's letters an' stuff like that. Well, he's one hell of a bright guy an' reads law an' stuff like that. Well, I talked to him one time about her, 'cause he reads so much stuff. An' he says it don't do no good to read books. Says he's read ever'thing about prisons now, an' in the old times; an' he says she makes less sense to him now than she did before he starts readin'. He says it's a thing that started way to hell an' gone back, an' nobody seems to be able to stop her, an' nobody got sense enough to change her. He says for God's sake don't read about her because he says for one thing you'll jus' get messed up worse, an' for another you won't have no respect for the guys that work the gover'ments"."
— John Steinbeck

"Ma studied him. Her hand went blindly out and put the little bag of sugar on the pile in her arm. "Thanks to you," she said quietly. She started for the door, and when she reached it, she turned about. "Learnin' it all the time, ever' day. If you're in trouble or hurt or need - go to poor people. They're the only one's that'll help - the only ones." The screen door slammed shut behind her."
— John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)