The primary cause of disorder and lawlessness today, as throughout history, is the poverty of the many in contrast to the affluence of the few. But a new element of unrest has been added: a growing awareness that mass poverty is caused by defective institutions that prevent our harnessing the physical capabilities of science, engineering, management and labor to create general affluence; in other words, a growing awareness that poverty in any country that is or can be industrialized, is man’s not nature’s fault.
Paupertas fugitur, totoque arcessitur orbe=--Poverty is shunned and treated as criminal throughout the world.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over fear; fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation and death.... It is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
Is there for honest poverty / That hangs his head, and a' that? / The coward slave we pass him by, / We dare be poor for a' that.
Laudo manentem; si celeres quatit / Pennas, resigno qu? dedit, et mea / Virtute me involvo probamque / Pauperiem sine dote qu?ro=--I praise her (Fortune) while she stays with me; if she flaps her swift pinions, I resign all she has given me, and wrap myself up in my own virtue and pay my addresses to honest undowered poverty.
It is perfectly clear that people, given no alternative, will choose tyranny over anarchy, because anarchy is the worst tyranny of all…. The special nature of liberties is that they can be defended only as long as we still have them. So the very first signs of their erosion must be resisted, whether the issue be domestic surveillance by the Army, so-called preventive detention, or the freedom of corporate television, or that of a campus newspaper…. It is an eternal error to believe that a cause considered righteous sanctifies unrighteous methods…. It is eternally true that both successful and unsuccessful revolutions increase the power of the state, not that of the individual…. We are learning that affluence without simplicity is a giant trap; that poverty itself is endurable, but not poverty side by side with affluence. Our political leaders are learning that Sophocles was right: nothing that is vast enters into the affairs of mortals without a curse, and that vast American power has now produced its curse…. What counts most in the long haul of adult life is not brilliance, or charisma, or derring-do, but rather the quality that the Romans called “gravitas” — patience, stamina, and weight of judgment…. The prime virtue is courage, because it makes all other virtues possible. [Highlights from the speech made by Eric Sevareid, CBS chief Washington correspondent, at the 80th Annual Stanford University Commencement, June 13, 1971.]
Although there may be in a community individuals who from want of capital cannot apply their labor as efficiently as they would, yet so long as there is a sufficiency of capital in the community at large, the real limitation is not the want of capital, but the want of its proper distribution. If bad government rob the laborer of his capital, if unjust laws take from the producer the wealth with which he would assist production, and hand it over to those who are mere pensioners upon industry, the real limitation to the effectiveness of labor is in misgovernment, and not in want of capital. And so of ignorance, or custom, or other conditions which prevent the use of capital. It is they, not the want of capital, that really constitute the limitation. [ Progress and Poverty , New York: Robert Schalkenbach Foundation, 1979, p. 84.]
Love and poverty are hard to hide.
Give me neither poverty nor riches.
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
He who looks on a true friend looks, as it were, upon a kind of image of himself: wherefore friends, though absent, are still present; though in poverty, they are rich; though weak, yet in the enjoyment of health; and, what is still more difficult to assert, though dead, they are alive.
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
I wish to work miracles. I may have less than other and less energetic men; and those who wish to grow rich in a day live a long time in great poverty, as happens, and will always happen, to alchemists, who seek to make gold and silver, and to the engineers who wish from still {180} water to obtain life and perpetual motion, and to the supreme fool,--the necromancer and the magician.
He travels safe and not unpleasantly who is guarded by poverty and guided by love.
~Eternity.~--Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.--_Addison._
You who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your pedigree, or are proud of your wealth.
Paupertatis pudor et fuga=--The shame and the bugbear of poverty.
It requires a great deal of poetry to gild the pill of poverty.
Pride and poverty are ill met, yet often live together.
Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.
The mind of a fool is empty; and everything is empty where there is poverty.
Faulheit ist der Schlussel zur Armuth=--Sloth is the key to poverty.
Painting has a wider intellectual range and is more wonderful and greater as regards its artistic resources than sculpture, because the painter is by necessity constrained to amalgamate his mind with the very mind of nature and to be the interpreter between nature and art, making with art a commentary on the causes of nature's manifestations which are the inevitable result of its laws; and showing in what way the likenesses of objects which surround the eye correspond with the true images of the pupil of the eye, and showing among objects of equal size which of them will appear more or less dark, or more or less clear; and among objects equally low which of them will appear more or less low; or among those of the same height which of them will appear more or less high; or among objects of equal size {99} placed at various distances one from the other, why some will appear more clearly than others. And this art embraces and comprehends within itself all visible things, which sculpture in its poverty cannot do: that is, the colours of all objects and their gradations; it represents transparent objects, and the sculptor will show thee natural objects without the painter's devices; the painter will show thee various distances with the gradations of colour producing interposition of the air between the objects and the eye; he will show thee the mists through which the character of objects is with difficulty descried; the rains which clouded mountains and valleys bring with them; the dust which is inherent to and follows the contention between these forces; the rivers which are great or small in volume; the fishes disporting themselves on the surface or at the bottom of these waters; the polished pebbles of various colours which are collected on the washed sands at bottom of rivers surrounded by floating plants beneath the surface of the water; the stars at diverse heights above us; and in the same manner other innumerable effects to which sculpture cannot attain.
It's sin, and no poverty, that maks a man miserable.
That which is inherently nonfinanceable is financed. That which is inherently financeable is not financed. And the illogic of poverty amidst eagerness and ability to produce plenty goes on.
Armuth des Geistes Gott erfreut, / Armuth, und nicht Armseligkeit=--It is poverty of spirit that God delights in--poverty, and not beggarliness.
Les republiques finissent par le luxe; les monarchies par la pauvrete=--Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies.
And rustic life and poverty Grow beautiful beneath his touch.
Eild and poortith are ill to thole=, _i.e._, age and poverty are hard to bear.
When a man's dog deserts him on account of his poverty, he can't get any lower down in this world.
Recognizing as I do that I cannot make use of {5} subject matter which is useful and delightful, since my predecessors have exhausted the useful and necessary themes, I shall do as the man who by reason of his poverty arrives last at the fair, and cannot do otherwise than purchase what has already been seen by others and not accepted, but rejected by them as being of little value. I shall place this despised and rejected merchandise, which remains over after many have bought, on my poor pack, and I shall go and distribute it, not in the big cities, but in the poor towns, and take such reward as my goods deserve.
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty.
Learning maketh young men temperate, is the comfort of old age, standing for wealth with poverty, and serving as an ornament to riches.--_Cicero._
True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognise humility and poverty, mockery and despite, wretchedness and disgrace, suffering and death, as things divine.
Non possidentem multa vocaveris / Recte beatum. Rectius occupat / Nomen beati, qui Deorum / Muneribus sapienter uti, / Duramque callet pauperiem pati, / Pejusque leto flagitium timet=--You would not justly call him blessed who has great possessions; more justly does he claim the title who knows how to use wisely the gifts of the gods and to bear the hardships of poverty, and who fears disgrace worse than death.
Haud facile emergunt quorum virtutibus obstat / Res angusta domi=--Not easily do those attain to distinction whose abilities are cramped by domestic poverty.
The profession of riches without their possession leads to the worst form of poverty.
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. [Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation in the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., April 1886.]
Solvuntur risu tabul?=--The case is dismissed amid laughter. _Hor._ [Greek: somata polla trephein, kai domata poll' anegeirein / Atrapos eis penien estin etoimotate]--To feed many mouths and build many houses is the directest road to poverty.
Hic vivimus ambitiosa / Paupertate omnes=--We all live here in a state of ostentatious poverty.
Two-Factor Theory is impressive and provocative and hopeful. Of course, universal capitalism as they conceive it and expound it would constitute the greatest revolution since the New Deal…. This is an approach to spreading affluence and not perpetuating poverty.
We like to distinguish those regimes which are totalitarian from those which are not. But that is a distinction of degree, not of kind. All government seeks to be absolute and will become absolute in fact unless restrained by effective checks and balances: nominally the servant of the sovereign people, it naturally tends to become the manager and manipulator, even their owner. So, while population control is partly a cause of the rich against the poor, it’s also a cause of government against the citizen. Where poverty continues, witness is borne to the very limited competence of government, to the unwelcome fact that it does not really have a God-like power to solve all problems and provide all good things; and in any case, what farmer wants to have more cattle than he can manage comfortably? [ Too Many People? pp. 59-60.]
We are in agreement with the desire of workers to increase their income…. However, we insist that most of the increased income should be derived from ownership of capital.… If property can confer dignity, material comfort, and security upon the few, it can do the same for the many.… We suggest that the perennial emphasis of the Church on the right of individuals to own property deserves reaffirmation at this time and that we should consider bold new steps to enable the vast majority of God’s people to become owners of property which will constitute for them a source of a second income. We maintain that this will help reduce poverty and restore human rights and dignity to millions. [Statement by the Executive Committee of the National Catholic Rural Conference, Des Moines, Iowa, June 19, 1968.]
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.
If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty.
Great wits to madness nearly are allied; / Both serve to make our poverty our pride.
You will hear people say that poverty is the best spur to the artist. They have never felt the iron of it in their flesh. They do not know how mean it makes you. It exposes you to endless humiliation, it cuts your wings, it eats into your soul like a cancer. It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. I pity with all my heart the artist, whether he writes or paints, who is entirely dependent for subsistence upon his art.
Fell luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksands, poverty or chains.
Does not the word come like a soft shower, assuaging the fury of the flame? Yea, is it not an asbestos armor, against which the heat hath no power? Let affliction come--God has chosen me. Poverty, thou mayest stride in at my door--but God is in the house already, and He has chosen me. Sickness, thou mayest intrude, but I have a balsam ready--God has chosen me. Whatever befalls me in this vale of tears I know that He has "chosen" me. Fear not, Christian; Jesus is with thee. In all thy fiery trials His presence is both thy comfort and safety. He will never leave one whom He has chosen for His own. "Fear not, for I am with thee," is His sure word of promise to His chosen ones in the "furnace of affliction."--_Spurgeon._
Folly is the shield of lies, just as unreadiness is the defence of poverty.
S?va paupertas, et avitus apto cum lare fundus=--Stern poverty, and an ancestral piece of land with a dwelling to match.
Reformers= (_Reformatorische Geister_) =do not step into the arena amid a flourish of drums and trumpets; they must make their debut rather under the badge of the cross, and have been cradled at their birth in a manger; poverty and a humble pedigree is all their inheritance, and their childhood is never touched or shone upon by the glitter= (
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches; and therefore every man endeavours with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.
Real sorrow is almost as difficult to discover as real poverty. An instinctive delicacy hides the rays of the one and the wounds of the other.
Riches come better after poverty than poverty after riches.
Propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty.
Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove The pangs of guilty power and hapless love! Rest here, distressed by poverty no more; Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; Sleep undisturb'd within this peaceful shrine, Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!
Ars est sine arte, cujus principium est mentiri, medium laborare, et finis mendicare=--It is an art without art, which has its beginning in falsehood, its middle in toil, and its end in poverty. _Applied originally to the pursuits of the Alchemists._
There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth: and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.
The first approach to riches is security from poverty.
When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the window.
Lastly, the eighth, and the most meritorious of all, is to anticipate charity by preventing poverty; namely, to assist the reduced fellowman, either by a considerable gift, or a loan of money, or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business, so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. To this Scripture alludes when it says: “And if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him; yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner; that he may live with thee… ” [ Matnot Aniyim , 10, 7 (the eight levels of charity).]
He who lives on expectations dies in poverty.
Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, / Quam quod ridiculos homines facit=--Unhappy poverty has nothing in it more galling than this, that it makes men ridiculous.
Who ordered toil as the condition of life, ordered weariness, ordered sickness, ordered poverty, failure, success,--to this man a foremost place, to the other a nameless struggle with the crowd; to that a shameful fall, or paralyzed limb, or sudden accident; to each some work upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it.--_Thackeray._
Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the beggar's robes and graceful insignia of his profession, his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is expected to show himself in public.
Riches breed care, poverty is safe.
If you mean whiskey, the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean that evil drink that topples Christian men and women from the pinnacles of righteous and gracious living into the bottomless pits of degradation, shame, despair, helplessness, and hopelessness, then, my friend, I am opposed to it with every fiber of my being. However, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the elixir of life, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and the warm glow of contentment in their eyes; if you mean Christmas cheer, the stimulating sip that puts a little spring in the step of an elderly gentleman on a frosty morning; if you mean that drink that enables man to magnify his joy, and to forget life's great tragedies and heartbreaks and sorrow; if you mean that drink the sale of which pours into our treasuries untold millions of dollars each year, that provides tender care for our little crippled children, our blind, our deaf, our dumb, our pitifully aged and infirm, to build the finest highways, hospitals, universities, and community colleges in this nation, then my friend, I am absolutely, unequivocally in favor of it. This is my position, and as always, I refuse to be compromised on matters of principle.
Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.
[T]hose who urge increasing redistribution of wealth are not doing so because they reject freedom. They are sincerely seeking ways to eliminate poverty, and because they are sincere I expect them to give serious consideration to the freedom route to prosperity…. I am satisfied that Kelso’s theories are correct, and that this is the solution that we shall have to adopt if we are to avoid the unthinkable alternative [the elimination of freedom]. [Speech before the 39th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Calgary, Alberta, October 1968.]
If those who lead you say, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky", then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, "It is in the sea", then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.
In ev'ry sorrowing soul I pour'd delight, And poverty stood smiling in my sight.
Magnum pauperies opprobrium jubet / Quidvis aut facere aut pati=--Poverty, that deep disgrace, bids us do or suffer anything.
Honesta paupertas prior quam opes mal?=--Poverty with honour is better than ill-gotten wealth.
Steep'd me in poverty to the very lips.
Indocilis pauperiem pati=--One that cannot learn to bear poverty.
Ab inopia ad virtutem obsepta est via=--The way from poverty to virtue is an obstructed one.
Armuth ist die grosste Plage, / Reichtum ist das hochste Gut=--Poverty is the greatest calamity, riches the highest good.
Wealth imparts a birdlime quality to the possessor, at which the man in his native poverty would have revolted.
Nothing deepens and intensifies family traits like poverty and toil and suffering. It is the furnace heat that brings out the characters, the pressure that makes the strata perfect.
If we are looking for one single action which will enable the poor to overcome their poverty, I would go for credit. Money is power. I have been arguing that credit should be accepted as a human right. If we can come up with a system which allows everybody access to credit while ensuring excellent repayment — I can give you a guarantee that poverty will not last long. If the helplessness and isolation of labour, who have nothing to sell but their labour, can be totally removed by connecting labour with capital through a universal credit system, we’ll then have other kinds of actors on the economic scene different from what the existing capitalist world would allow us to bring out. [“Does the Capitalist System have to be the Handmaiden of the Rich?” , Grameen Dialogue , October, 1994.]
The concentration of wealth is a natural result of this concentration of ability, and regularly recurs in history. The rate of concentration varies (other factors being equal) with the economic freedom permitted by morals and laws. Despotism may for a time retard the concentration; democracy, allowing the most freedom, accelerates it. The relative equality of Americans before 1776 has been overwhelmed by a thousand forms of physical, mental and economic differentiation, so that the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest is now greater than at any time since Imperial plutocratic Rome. In progressive societies the concentration may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty. [ The Lessons of History , Simon and Shuster, 1968, p. 55.]