Richard Leakey Quotes

Poverty wastes people; it wastes opportunity.

Watching the scenes out of New Orleans, if you turn down the sound it could be the Sudan or any Third World country. But it's not. it's the United States of America.

The problem of the Middle East is poverty more than politics.

I am open-eyed about what poverty does to people.

It was a slow understanding that the lack of education in a country like Somalia creates these huge social problems.

Ridding the world of poverty is, of course, a fantasy.

Our time has experienced greater technological progress than ever existed before, and yet we are faced with the fact that world-wide poverty, hunger, death of children, unemployment, misery and the destruction of nature have not abated but rather to some extent increased. Many peoples are threatened with economic ruin, social disarray, political marginalization and national collapse.

We are at risk of turning over to the next generation a worse life than we have had.

We go from summit to summit, and our people go from abyss to abyss … the drama of terrible underdevelopment.

Global poverty is a powder keg ignitable by our own indifference.

This is a third world environment.

The third world is important then, because it is made up its human beings, human beings who possess the same nature we do, people who are capable of suffering and desire and, even as we suffer and desire, people who are condemned to a shabby, deprived and disease ridden existence, and these are people for whom we have a moral and religious obligation to care about.

Poverty, discrimination and ignorance decrease growth.

Look, there are people hurting in this country. We have to find solutions to make their lives better, right?

Whatever people's backgrounds or values, a society where more and more people face a daily struggle to house, clothe and even feed themselves and their families cannot possibly be the answer.

We think of violence as being conflict and fighting and wars and so forth, but the most ongoing horrific measure of violence is in the horrible poverty of the Third World... and the poverty in the United States as well. We have our own Third World here. And we have to first become aware of that and how to help and solve that.

It’s scandalous when one thinks about the people who live in a world in which they need not be hungry, in which they need not die without medical care, in which they need not be illiterate, they need not feel hopeless and miserable so much of the time, and yet they are.

Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society.

Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.

Despite the hundreds of non-governmental organizations and the continued outpouring of foreign aid, East Africa remains as a region overwhelmed by extreme poverty.

The 'Third World' is a term I don't like very much because we're all one world. I want people to know that the largest part of humanity is suffering.

The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.

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.