Simone Schwarz-Bart Quotes

The world is always terrible.

Disparity is Australia's worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to 'close the gap.'

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.

Power should not be concentrated in the hands of so few, and powerlessness in the hands of so many.

For every talent that poverty has stimulated, it has blighted a hundred.

Terrorism thrives when the gap between the 'haves' and 'have nots' becomes so wide and when the 'have nots' reach the point of such desperation, pain, and agony that they have nothing to lose.

The poor prey on one another because their lives offer no hope and communicate the tragic message to these human beings that they have no possibility to attain a decent standard of living.

The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too much in taxes.

The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.

If we continue to create a world where there is poverty and disrespect, there will continue to be terrorism.

Poverty and immorality are not synonymous.

Globalization has down sides because it leaves so many people behind.

There is a great fear of our Union -- a fear that I do not fully understand, but that I know is present...What is it that causes some men to act so hastily and so cruelly? It cannot be that we are so powerful. Is it so much to ask that the poorest people of the land have a measure of justice?

Poverty is a result of lack of opportunity. Lack of opportunity is about being without power, without being in a position to make choices.

What I hear from folks all the time is 'us against them.' It is a core part of what they feel is happening with our government. Investing here, but not there. Listening to some, but not nearly enough. Going into certain neighborhoods, but not others. That divide is something we have to categorically reject.

She couldn't imagine why there was such a difference between those children and her. She couldn't imagine why she and all these other people with her had to be treated this way. Who decided this, and what for?

I travel around the world, experiencing every language, every religion... some places where there's just no reason to smile, because their lives are so difficult.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

It's maddening in my travels to watch children dying simply because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Life is now a war zone, and as such, the number of people considered disposable has grown exponentially, and this includes low income whites, poor minorities, immigrants, the unemployed, the homeless, and a range of people who are viewed as a liability to capital and its endless predatory quest for power and profits.

Beautiful dreams - if the world were more beautiful they would come true - But the world is relentless & cruel - people are - they must be, I suppose, or they could not live.

The darkness is really out there. It's not something that's in my head, just. It's in my work because it's in the world.

In poor countries, the rich and powerful crush the poor and powerless.

To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.