Extreme Deprivation Quotes

Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference.

There are literally billions of people on the planet who live in an unimaginable poverty that's not in any way different from the plight of the people in Orchid. And you can't have the splendor of Rodeo Drive without the sweatshops of Indonesia; those two things go hand in hand.

Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism.

It would be impossible adequately to describe the privations which they [the Irish poor] habitually and silently endure…. In many districts, there only food is the potato, their only beverage, water … their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather … a bed or a blanket is a rare luxury … and nearby it all, their pig and manure heap constitute their only property.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

When a man is starving in the streets he is not thinking of bread and water, but of caviar and champagne!

When I am asked, "What, in your view, is the worst human rights problem in the world today?" I reply: "Absolute poverty." This is not the answer most journalists expect. It is neither sexy nor legalistic. But it is true.

Abject poverty is demeaning, is an assault on the dignity of those that suffer it. In the end it demeans us all. It makes the freedom of all of us less meaningful.

There is still a severe and scary amount of extreme poverty in rural parts of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma and sub-Saharan Africa.

Too much of nothing can turn a man into a liar. It can cause one man to sleep on nails and another to eat fire.