Extreme Poverty Quotes - Page 2

• The Millennium Declaration was a solemn pledge to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty.

  Kevin Watkins

  Children, Men, Fellow Man

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• By almost any measure, the world is better than it has ever been. People are living longer, healthier lives. Many nations that were aid recipients are now self-sufficient. You might think that such striking progress would be widely celebrated, but in fact, Melinda and I are struck by how many people think the world is getting worse. The belief that the world can’t solve extreme poverty and disease isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful. That’s why in this year’s letter we take apart some of the myths that slow down the work. The next time you hear these myths, we hope you will do the same.

  Bill Gates

  Thinking, Self, Years

  "3 Myths That Block Progress For The Poor". Bill and Melinda Gates' 2014 Annual Letter, www.gatesfoundation.org. January 20, 2014.

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• We all have the chance to create a world where extreme poverty is the exception rather than the rule.

  Bill Gates

  World, Poverty, Chance

  "3 Myths That Block Progress For The Poor". Bill and Melinda Gates' 2014 Annual Letter, www.gatesfoundation.org. January 20, 2014.

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• When Heaven is about to confer a great office on a man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil ; it exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty ; it confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.

  Mencius

  Exercise, Men, Office

  Confucius, Mencius, Ming Zuoqiu, Tso-ch'iu Ming (1861). “The Chinese Classics”, p.323

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• You cant not be changed by the experience of seeing extreme poverty. You start to want to think about ways in which you can make the world better.

  Mark Takano

  Thinking, World, Want

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• Development is a fundamental part of our national security. It is extreme poverty - the realities of access to water and food - which creates the long-term drivers of our insecurity. Most wars are fought over scarce resources, and that is going to accelerate in the future.

  Rajiv Shah

  War, Reality, Long

  "Rajiv Shah: Our aid work is for the American people". Interview with Madeleine Bunting, www.theguardian.com. June 15, 2011.

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• It's an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women. They're the ones who will get it done.

  Matt Damon

  Poverty, Facts, Done

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• Let us hear the dangers of thralldom to our consciences from ignorance, extreme poverty, and dependence; in short, from civil and political slavery. Let us see delineated before us the true map of man. Let us hear the dignity of his nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God-that consenting to slavery is a sacrilegious breach of trust, as offensive in the sight of God as it is derogatory from our own honor or interest or happiness-and that God Almighty has promulgated from heaven liberty, peace, and goodwill to man!

  John Adams

  Peace, Ignorance, Men

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• The true friend of the people should see that they be not too poor, for extreme poverty lowers the character of the democracy.

  Aristotle

  True Friend, Character, People

  Aristotle, Stephen Everson (1996). “Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens”, p.160, Cambridge University Press

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• We must fight inequality and poverty if we want to re-establish peace and security. Seven million Mexicans live in extreme poverty, which is why I have launched a crusade against hunger. We also have to improve our educational system and stimulate economic growth.

  Enrique Pena Nieto

  Educational, Fighting, Growth

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The point is that there is tremendous hypocrisy among the Christian right. And I think that Christian voters should start looking at global warming and extreme poverty as a religious issue that speaks to the culture of life.

  Al Franken

  Christian, Religious, Thinking

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• What Chavez has done [in Venezuela] is that he has brought extreme poverty to an end.

  Oliver Stone

  Venezuela, Done, Poverty

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• Heterosexuality has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women. Yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty.

  Adrienne Rich

  Heterosexuality Is, Cost, Poverty

  Adrienne Rich (1994). “Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985”, p.40, W. W. Norton & Company

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• In a world where millions of human beings live in extreme poverty, die of malnutrition and lack medical care, where pandemics continue to kill, it is imperative to pursue good faith disarmament negotiations and to shift budgets away from weapons production, war-mongering, surveillance of private persons and devote available resources to address global challenges including humanitarian relief, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and adaptation, prevention of pandemics, and the development of a green economy.

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  War, Challenges, Environmental

  "UN Expert Urges States to Cut Military Spending and Invest More in Human Development". www.ohchr.org. April 14, 2014.

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• One of the glaring failures of capitalism is the continuing widespread existence of poverty - often extreme poverty. Even in the advanced economies, many millions of people endure terrible economic and social deprivation, despite the incredible wealth all around them.

  Jim Stanford

  People, Poverty, Wealth

  Jim Stanford (2008). “Economics for everyone: a short guide to the economics of capitalism”, Pluto Pr

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• The issue I focus on the most is extreme poverty. I think it's kind of out of sight out of mind. I wish there would be more stories about that to connect people to what's happening. To personalize it, to make it real to people, to inspire them to action.

  John Legend

  Real, Thinking, Sight

  "Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. with John Legend". Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. April 4, 2008.

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• America has a critical place to play in the end of extreme poverty.

  Hugh Evans

  Play, America, Poverty

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• Extreme poverty is not only a condition of unsatisfied material needs. It is often accompanied by a degrading state of powerlessness.

  Peter Singer

  Needs, Poverty, States

  Peter Singer (2010). “The Life You Can Save: How to play your part in ending world poverty”, p.6, Pan Macmillan

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• The form of law which I propose would be as follows: In a state which is desirous of being saved from the greatest of all plagues-not faction, but rather distraction-there should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor, again, excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil . . . Now the legislator should determine what is to be the limit of poverty or of wealth.

  Plato

  Law, Evil, Would Be

  Plato (1872). “Laws. Appendix: Lesser Hippias. First Alcibiades. Menexenus. Index of persons and places”, p.269

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• The majority of people who come to America come for a better life, just like the Italians, the Jews, the Irish, and the Polish did in generations before. A lot of the Irish came here back in the turn of the 19th to the 20th century because there were no opportunities and no options at home for them. There were no jobs and there was extreme poverty. They came here to be able to send money back home.

  Marty Walsh

  Jobs, Home, Opportunity

  Source: www.mtv.com

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• The essence of Africa's crises is fundamentally it's extreme poverty.

  Jeffrey Sachs

  Philosophy, Essence, Political

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• Nearly one billion women and men, a third of the world's workforce, are either unemployed or unable to earn enough to keep themselves out of extreme poverty. There are 100 million new entrants into the labour market each year. Up to 90 percent in some regions are in the informal economy. 180 million kids are engaged in the worst forms of child labour. Put it all together and it is not only morally unacceptable, but politically dangerous

  Juan Somavia

  Children, Kids, Men

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• You have to go through cycles of extreme poverty and suffering for a while; they are used to that...They get up early, run hard, rest drink tea, get out and run hard again. Wehn Simon Dirorie gets up at 4 a.m. - I'm dedicated, but I'm not that dedicated.

  Keith Brantly

  Running, Up Early, Tea

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• If we continue on the trend we’re on, we can reduce extreme poverty by more than 60 percent-lifting more than 700 million people out of dollar-and-a-quarter a day poverty and back from the brink of hunger and malnutrition. But if we accelerate our progress from 3 percent annual reduction to over 6 percent and focus on key turnarounds in some difficult countries, we could get a 90 percent reduction. We could essentially eliminate dollar-and-a-quarter head count poverty.

  Rajiv Shah

  Country, Keys, People

  Rajiv Shah's Remarks at The Aspen Institute, 2012-2017.usaid.gov. August 1, 2012.

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• If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

  Denis Diderot

  Mean, Numbers, Would Be

  "L'Encyclopédie", Article on Wealth, 1766.

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