This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.
Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.
In the context of this more mature discourse, the Valdez oil spill is no longer seen as an Alaskan matter, an “episode” in the geography of pollution. Rather it is recognized as a social act that raises such “accidents” to the level of systemic problems-rooted not in consumerism, technological advance, and population growth but in an irrational system of production, an abuse of technology by a grow-or-die economy, and the demographics of poverty and wealth. Ecological dislocation cannot be separated from social dislocations. The social roots of our environmental problems cannot remain hidden without trivializing the crisis itself and thwarting its resolution.
Abuse | Growth | Poverty | Problems | System | Technology | Crisis |
N. Scott Momaday, fully Navarre Scott Momaday
In my lifetime, I have seen changes in the Indian world that are nearly unimaginable. At the turn of the 20th century, the Indian was literally headed for extinction. The death rate exceeded the birth rate, poverty and disease were pervasive, the prospects for survival--let alone a better life--were bleak. At the turn of the century, the Indian has not only survived , indeed he--and she--has become a viable, even necessary, factor in the life of the nation and of the world.
Better | Birth | Death | Disease | Life | Life | Poverty | World |
Child labor has become one of the biggest global concerns for many human rights activists. Approximately 218 million children world- wide are forced into labor. Unfortunately, 126 million of them work in hazardous conditions. Roughly 73 million of child labor populations are less than 10 years old. Most important, one of the most astonishing facts about child labor is that every year 22,000 children die in accidents that are work- related (FreetheChildren.com). The majority of the children subjected to child labor come from poorer countries of the world. As a result of increased poverty in these parts of the world, children are kept out of school and forced to work. Organizations that have been developed to fight child labor believe that by increasing education access and helping to end poverty are crucial in the fight to end senseless child labor.
Children | Education | Global | Labor | Majority | Poverty | Rights | Work | Child |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.
Nicholas Boileau-Despréaux, sometimes Nicholas Desperaux or Nicolas Boileau
Gold gives an appearance of beauty even to ugliness: but with poverty everything becomes frightful.
Appearance | Beauty | Poverty | Beauty |
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.
We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.
Action | Discussion | Disgrace | Events | Extravagance | Indispensable | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Public | Refinement | Struggle | Wealth | Wise | Think |
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the laws secure equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. "Neither is poverty a bar, for a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his conditions. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private intercourses we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not give him sour looks which, though harmless, are not pleasant.
Administration | Example | Excellence | Government | Justice | Looks | Man | Obscurity | Obscurity | Poverty | Public | Reward | Rivalry | Excellence | Government |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
The very essence of the present economic system is, that the worker can never enjoy the well-being he has produced, and that the number of those who live at his expense will always augment. The more a country is advanced in industry, the more this number grows. Inevitably, industry is directed, and will have to be directed, not towards what is needed to satisfy the needs of all, but towards that which, at a given moment, brings in the greatest temporary profit to a few. Of necessity, the abundance of some will be based on the poverty of others, and the straitened circumstances of the greater number will have to be maintained at all costs, that there may be hands to sell themselves for a part only of that which they are capable of producing; without which, private accumulation of capital is impossible!
Abundance | Circumstances | Industry | Poverty | Present | System | Will |
Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.
Poverty |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
"Speak not of liberty — poverty is slavery!" is not a vain formula; it has penetrated into the ideas of the great working-class masses; it filters through all the present literature; it even carries those along who live on the poverty of others, and takes from them the arrogance with which they formerly asserted their rights to exploitation.
If you fall into poverty, live that way without grumbling - then your poverty will not burden you. Likewise, if you are rich, live with your riches. All this is the functioning of Buddha-nature. In short, Buddha-nature has the quality of infinite adaptability.
I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.
Effort | Ideas | Ignorance | Meaning | Poverty | Principles | Public | Friends |
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
The poverty of one who has renounced is real riches compared with the riches of one who holds them fast.