Margaret Drabble Quotes

Poverty is relative, and, therefor not ignoble.

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

It is easy to say that there are the rich and the poor, and so something should be done. But in history, there are always the rich and the poor. If the poor were not as poor, we would still call them the poor. I mean, whoever has less can be called the poor. You will always have the 10% that have less and the 10% that have the most.

Texas has arguably the most extreme separation between the well off and everyday people in the United States.

I think greed is a critical problem - the gap between the poor and the rich. The gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent.

If everybody lives in the same way, there's something almost narcotizing about it, but the true misery of economic class difference is knowing that you can't have what somebody else does.

In middle-income countries, inequality becomes a problem because you can see there is a layer of people who are doing well, while the poor are still stuck there.

To be clear, the gap between the have gots and the have nots is widening. In this most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, that concerns me.

The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health and social mobility are all threatened.

The gap between rich and poor is widening dramatically. There's a hangar at the Cairo airport for private jets, billionaires are on the Forbes list, and Egypt's annual per-capita income is two thousand dollars. How can you sustain that?

The gap between the rich and poor is widening fast.

I don't want there to be this separation between the rich and poor. I may be part of the three percent because I've been fortunate and done well for myself, but I will never forget about the 97 percent. That was me growing up. I was so poor I dreamt about being just 'regular poor,' not 'poor, poor.'

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Never forget that there are rich people in poor countries and poor people in rich countries.

The rich are few everywhere, the poor many.

Los Angeles cannot permanently exist as two cities—one amazingly prosperous, the other increasingly poorer in substance and in hope.... This city, like the nation, is living with an increasing polarization of incomes. A rising tide no longer lifts all boats.

There are only two families in the whole world, my old grandmother used to say, The Haves and the Have-Nots.

This country is very good at creating wealth, but not very good at distributing it.

No society is healthy when the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.

I was the kind of poor where I knew right away I had less than everyone around me. Our environment, our physical space reflected our income.

Obama's economic policies widened the gap between the rich and the poor.

It is absolute poverty that you could end, but I think relative poverty is a whole other issue.

In the past we used to think of poverty in absolute terms - meaning straightforward material deprivation... We need to think of poverty in relative terms - the fact that some people lack those things which others in society take for granted.

I think in some ways it would make more sense to have as a poverty level a relative concept and say, the level of poverty is that level of income or that level of consumption below which 10 percent of the people now are.