Life is about luck and it's about circumstances and socioeconomic conditions and all the rest of it, but you know, you can also make choices. It's about spirit and generosity and all the other things, too.
Poverty divide not only nations but societies within nations.
Poverty is a soft pedal upon all branches of human activity.
Masterpieces of art possess immense potential to advance a worldview that could help assuage the societal terrors posed by globalization, the most thoroughgoing socioeconomic upheaval since the Industrial Revolution, which has set off a pandemic of retrogressive nationalism, regional separatism, and religious extremism.
I'm from Brooklyn. I grew up very poor- seven people, four rooms. My dad had no education.
Ninety percent of the racial debate is really about economics.
The goatherds were the poorest people of Spain. Probably, they were the richest.
My mom was a single mother in the South Bronx living in adverse conditions. Seeing her struggles to get herself off of welfare and get back into the workplace and give me and my sister a better life - it's an inspiration for me.
For every challenge we face - unemployment, poverty, crime, income growth, income inequality, productivity, competitiveness - a great education is a major component of the solution.
I came from a good family and a nice area, but I went to a rough state school.
Growth is not the end-all-goal of politics, but it is one of the most compelling deliverables.
Poverty is not really as much of an obstacle to educational expansion as it's sometimes made out to be.
Poverty is not created by poor people. It is produced by our failure to create institutions to support human capabilities.
I saw a charity appeal in the Guardian the other day, and it read "Little Zuki has to walk 13 miles a day just to fetch water". And I couldn't help thinking, she should move.
As someone who grew up in public housing, I've known these conditions.
I was the first in my family to go to college.
The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.
It is surprising how few references in our politics there are to the underclass as compared by the middle class.
I'm really white trash.
Poor people know poor people, and rich people know rich people. It is one of the few things La Rochefoucauld did not say, but then La Rochefoucauld never lived in the Bronx.
There's only one thing money won't buy, and that is poverty.
Eviction is fundamentally changing the face of poverty.
Criminality is always the result of poverty.
As you know, I'm a black girl out of the projects of New York City, raised in a single parent home because my parents divorced very very young... welfare and homeless at four and then again at 16 and just not having the things or the necessary tools that society would say I needed to have in order to be any kind of success in life.
I tell you what: I bet Jerry Jones would not trade places with a 75-year black man in Chicago. I bet Joel Klatt would not trade places with a 30-year old black guy from Chicago or Watts. I bet he wouldn't do that. You know why? It's great to know that I'm white and a male in America.
