Sunday, November 3, 2013 – Regarding Food Stamps
I’ve been making a list of the things they don’t teach you at school. They don’t teach you how to love somebody. They don’t teach you how to be famous. They don’t teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don’t teach you how to walk away from someone you don’t love any longer. They don’t teach you how to know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. They don’t teach you what to say to someone who’s dying. They don’t teach you anything worth knowing. ~ Neil Gaiman
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. ~ Mahatma Gandhi
There is no Them. There are only facets of Us. ~ John Green
Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! – I have as much soul as you – and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you! ~ Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
There’s no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars and then there’s people starving. There’s no way! There’s no way that these people should own planes and there people don’t have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants! I know you’re rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need ONE house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you know there’s somebody with no room?! It just don’t make sense to me. It don’t. ~ Tupac Shakur
If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones. ~ John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity. ~ Coco Chanel
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. ~ Hélder Câmara
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
Mother Teresa was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. ~ Christopher Hitchens
I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowed to mingle freely. ~ Charles Bukowski
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed. ~ Herman Melville
A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things. ~ Herman Melville
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher. ~ Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser. ~ Albert Einstein
It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. ~ Eugene Victor Debs
If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. ~ Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle
The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity. ~ Erich Fromm
The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger. ~ Fidel Castro
It is a common condition of being poor… you are always afraid that the good things in your life are temporary, that someone can take them away, because you have no power beyond your own brute strength to stop them. ~ Rick Bragg
I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate. ~ Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves…. It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. ~ George Orwell, 1984
Poverty made a sound like a wet cough in the shadows of the room. ~ Ray Bradbury, The Golden Apples of the Sun
Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections on the French Revolution
How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present. ~ Robert Walser, The Tanners
It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you. ~ George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
A poor man is not disposed to quick and high resentment when he is among the rich: he is apt to yield to others, for he knows others are above him: he is not stiff and self-willed; he is patient with hard fare; he expects no other than to be despised, and takes it patiently; he does not take it heinously that he overlooked and but little regarded; he is prepared to be in a lowly place; he readily honours his superiors; he takes reproofs quietly; he readily honours others as above him; he easily yields to be taught, and does not claim much to his understanding and judgment; he is not over nice or humoursome, and has his spirit subdued to hard things; he is not assuming, nor apt to take much upon him, but it is natural for him to be subject to others. Thus it is with the humble Christian. ~ Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections
A castaway in the sea was going down for the third time when he caught sight of a passing ship. Gathering his last strength, he waved frantically and called for help. Someone on board peered at him scornfully and shouted back, “Get a boat!” ~ Daniel Quinn
You say you care about the poor? Tell me their names. ~ Craig Greenfield
How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour
Hunger and necessity are poor teachers of morality. A society that cannot provide the basics of life does not get its laws obeyed. ~ A. J. Quinnell
Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime. ~ John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy
In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. ~ Confucius
Just Above Sunset 