Maya Angelou Quotes

The President also talked at length about how well the American economy is doing. Apparently, he got his information on this topic from his millionaire supporters. For the average working family, these are trying economic times.

…it would be much better to enable every man to earn his own living, instead of being driven to the awful necessity of stealing and then dying for it.

… there are a great many people who not only can make no budget but can barely manage to exist with their families on what they earn from day to day

It's wrong that so many hardworking people - people working full-time, or even multiple jobs - need public assistance just to survive.

Too many jobs don't pay enough to get by, let alone get ahead.

Americans shouldn't have to hold down two or three jobs to make ends meet.

I've known what it's like to survive without a steady job. Growing up in the Philippines, I watched my parents juggle part-time jobs at the corner shop and as tailors, barely able to make ends meet for my three brothers and me.

I do think that it is no surprise that, economically, America is in trouble. There's been a lot of trouble out there. More and more women have found themselves doing phone sex and things like that, to help pay bills, so that they could be two-income households. They can do these short-term jobs and still pick up their kids at school, at the end of the day, and drop them off in the morning. I find it fascinating. I'm not one to judge the people in that situation, nor would I really want to.

I would say that many of the characters in my stories do not live in true poverty - they are not out on the street; they are not wondering if there will be anything to eat in the next week. They are people who are at the lower echelons of the economic strata.

Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.

The hardest work in the world is being out of work.

How can anyone live off of minimum wage?

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

I was very poor and I was a waitress, and it's hard to be a poor waitress in New York.

There is nothing worse than being ashamed of parsimony or poverty.

While some people are certainly seeing economic benefits, many others are unemployed, underemployed, without health insurance and struggling to make ends meet.

Today a minimum wage earner has to work a day and a half just to pay for a full tank of gas. That is simply shameful.

A lot of people in this country right now are living with multiple generations under one roof, struggling to make ends meet.

In Latin America, you don't do things for the money because there is no money.

How can a man help breaking the law when he don't have money to live on?

Does anyone really believe it is possible to make even the most basic ends meet on $5.15 an hour?

Even more important maybe, or equally more important at least, is they don't have to scrap for a living.

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

It's hard for me to understand how working-class people support themselves.

What keeps me up at night is poverty and unemployment.