Jim Wallis Quotes

What does peace mean in a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 587 billionaires exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest countries?

Half the people of the world are living on less than $2 a day.

I'd worked at the World Bank briefly as an undergrad and studied poverty levels around the world - particularly those earning less than $1.25 a day.

One half of the world's people live on less than two dollars a day. This should concern our national security policy as well as our conscience.

I like globalization; I want to say it works, but it is hard to say that when six hundred million people are slipping backwards.

The problems of the Third World—its poverty, its ignorance, its debt—never really seemed to affect Europeans and Americans. No longer. It's a little warmer than it used to be. The water is rising.

If you are poor, you are not likely to live long.

On a macro level, four billion people on Earth make less than four dollars a day.

By the time this concert ends this evening, 30,000 Africans will have died because of extreme poverty. By this time tomorrow evening, another 30,000. This does not make sense.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.

I want to eradicate poverty. I think that there's a tremendous passion for that inside the World Bank.

I was deeply concerned then, and have become more concerned since, that unless we can deal with the questions of development and the questions of poverty, there's no way that we're going to have a peaceful world for our children.

We have three billion people, half the world's population today, living on less than two dollars a day.

What must a poor nation do when its very sustenance depends on the remains and bits that the nations gracefully throw them, once they have had their fill…. Our planet is rich enough to provide for all of us, so why this tragic war for life which has been clouding our lives for generations?

When the World Economic Forum was established in 1971, the global population was four billion, of which 50% lived in poverty.

These days there is a lot of poverty in the world, and that's a scandal when we have so many riches and resources to give to everyone. We all have to think about how we can become a little poorer.

I lived with a coffee farmer called Dukale on a trip I made with World Vision to Ethiopia, and realised there's no good reason for the disparity in opportunity around the world.

I avoid going through places where there's too much poverty.

What I worry about is the lack of understanding in society around the world that there is a divide in the world between those who have and those who do not.

The whole world is set up so that for places like Switzerland to exist, that are crime-free and with the best care for everybody, you have to have places like Sudan, or Jamaica. But really, there's enough to share, when you check it. It's not that complicated, really. It's probably less thinking and more feeling that's required.

We are living in the 21st century, and children are dying of hunger, so how do we fight it?

It's morally wrong, and economically self-defeating, that so much wealth flows upwards towards the richest of Americans, while millions work full time but still can't provide for their families.

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.

Today continuing poverty and distress are a deeper and more important cause of international tensions, of the conditions that can produce war, than previously.

You leave the States, and you see people have bigger problems than you, much worse problems than you.