Quotations about...poverty

(1558 total words in this text)
(749 Reads)

Poverty

It�s terrible
the faint sound of a hardboiled egg cracked on a tin counter
it�s terrible this noise
when it stirs in the memory of a man who�s hungry
also terrible is the head of the man
the head of the man who�s hungry
when he looks at himself at six in the morning
in the mirror of a big store
a head the colour of dust
it�s not his head however which he looks at
in the window of Chez Potin
he doesn�t give a damn for his head
he doesn�t think of it
he dreams
he imagines another head
a calf�s head for instance
with vinegar sauce
or a head of no matter what that�s edible
and he moves his jaw gently
gently
and he grinds his teeth gently
because the world pays for its head
and he can�t do anything against the world
and he counts on his fingers one two three
one two three
that makes three days he hasn�t eaten
useless to repeat to himself Three days
It can�t last
it lasts
three days
three nights
without eating
and behind these windowpanes
pates bottles preserves
dead fish protected by their cans
cans protected by windowpanes
windowpanes protected by cops
cops protected by fear
what barricades for six unhappy sardines....
A little further on the Cafe
coffee with cream and hot rolls
the man staggers
and inside his head
a fog of words
a haze of words
sardines to eat
hardboiled egg coffee with cream
coffee watered with rum
coffee with cream
coffee with cream
coffee with crime watered with blood....
A man highly esteemed in his neighbourhood
has had his throat cut in full daylight
the assassin the bum stole two francs
from him
or one watered coffee
zero francs sixty-five centimes
two pieces of bread and butter
and twenty-five centimes for the tip.

It�s terrible
the faint sound of a hardboiled egg
cracked on a tin counter
it�s terrible this noise
when it stirs in the memory of a man who�s hungry.

-Jacques Prevert �Lazy Morning� from �Paroles�

Compassion is the property of the privileged classes
When the pitier lowers himself
to give to a beggar
he throbs with contempt
To protect his riches he pretends to be moved
and his gift to the beggar amounts to no more than a kick
- The Marquis De Sade in the play �Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss

Don�t be deceived
when our Revolution has been finally stamped out
and they tell you
things are better now
Even if there�s no poverty to be seen
because the poverty�s been hidden
even if you ever got more wages
and could afford to buy
more of these new and useless goods
which these new industries foist on you
and even if it seems to you
that you never had so much
that is only the slogan of those
who still have much more than you
- Jean Paul Marat in the play �Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss

�Earth provides enough to satisfy every man�s need
but not for every man�s greed�
Mahatma Gandhi

�Give me a fair price and I won�t need your charity�
Archbishop Dom Helder Camara of Brazil

�Such a prelate was Ethelwald, Bishop of Winchester, in the reign of King Edgar, about the year of Christ 963: he in a great famine sold away all the sacred vessels of his church for to relieve the almost starved people, saying that there was no reason that the senseless temples of God should abound in riches, and lively temples of the Holy Ghost to lack it.
- A survey of London by John Stow (1598)

�We lead immensely privileged lives compared to the vast majority of our fellow human beings. But we do so by consuming much more than our share of the Earth�s resources and by leaving a much larger footprint of waste and pollution on the global environment.
Moreover, our way of life is highly visible to those who cannot share it. It is flaunted before them as the model of development to which they should aspire. But is it sustainable? Certainly not, in its present form for all the six billion who already inhabit this planet, let alone the 15 billion who will inhabit it in decades to come. Our way of life has to change but how, and how fast?�
- Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General

�Every gun, every warship, every tank and every military aircraft built is, in the final analysis, a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, from those who are naked and not clothed�
- General Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President (1952-60)

�When a child dies, and some are always bound to die, since fifty-five per cent of the East End children die before they are five years old, the body is laid out in the same room. And if they are very poor, it is kept for some time until they can bury it. During the day it lies on the bed; during the night when the living take the bed, the dead occupies the table, from which, in the morning, when the dead is put back into the bed, they eat their breakfast. Sometimes the body is placed on the shelf which serves as a pantry for their food. Only a couple of weeks ago, an East End woman was in trouble, because, in this fashion, being unable to bury it, she had kept her dead child three weeks.
- Jack London, �The People of the Abyss� (1903)

�In a rich man�s house there is nowhere to spit but his face� �
Diogenes

� when you�ve got nothing, you�ve got nothing to lose, you�re invincible, you�ve got no secrets to conceal�
- Bob Dylan, �Like a Rolling Stone�

�Oh, dear me. This world is ill divided.
Them that work the hardest are the least provided.�
English Folk Song, early 9th Century

�It�s the same the whole world over, it�s the poor what gets the blame
It�s the rich that gets the pleasure, ain�t it all a bloody shame�
- music hall song

�the rich get rich and the poor get poorer�
�what a life for a crust of bread�
- a couple of my mum's sayings �Cuando merde tiver valer pobre nasce sem cu�
translated as �if shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without arseholes�
- anon

�people should be born twice,
once rich and once poor;
so the rich will know poverty
and the poor can enjoy life�
- from the film �Solas�, director Benito Zambrano

�The caveman, with his natural efficiency of one, got enough to eat most of the time, and no caveman went hungry all the time. Also, He lived a healthy, open-air life, loafed and rested himself, and found plenty of time in which to exercise his imagination and invent gods. That is to say, he did not have to work all his waking moments in order to get enough to eat. The child of the caveman (and this is true of the children of all savage peoples) had a childhood, and by that is meant a happy childhood of play and development.
And now how fares modern man? Consider the United States, the most prosperous and most enlightened country of the world. In the United States there are 10,000,000 people living in poverty. By poverty is meant that condition in life in which, through lack of food and adequate shelter, the mere standard of working efficiency cannot be maintained. In the United States there are 10,000,000 people who have not enough to eat. In the United States because they have not enough to eat, there are 10,000,000 people who cannot keep the ordinary measure of strength in their bodies. This means that these 10,000,000 people are perishing, are dying, body and soul, slowly, because they have not enough to eat. All over this broad prosperous, enlightened land, are men, women and children who are living miserably, In all the great cities, where they are segregated in slum ghettos, by hundreds of thousands and by millions, their misery becomes beastliness. No caveman ever starved as chronically as they starve, ever slept as vilely as they sleep, ever festered with rottenness and disease as they fester, nor ever toiled as hard and for as long as they toil.�
- Jack London, �Revolution� (1905)

�People shouldn�t have to survive, they should be able to live�
- Student protester, anti-cuts film, 2011

�They have a war on drugs, a war on gangs, a war on the poor but never a war on poverty.�
� Jay at 2012 Globel Women�s Strike Conference

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Past articles

Saturday, March 20
Peace campaign anecdotes from Helensburgh Court
Sunday, March 14
Challenging Penalty Notices to stop racism & criminalisation
Sunday, February 21
Heckler & Koch shut down 18th Feb 2010
Thursday, January 14
Raytheon news...a message of hope
Sunday, December 06
Home Education under threat: please sign the petition
Saturday, May 02
A great piece of anti-militarist direct action
Monday, April 13
A brief word about the Luton affair (from Peace News)
Thursday, March 12
probably the most costly photograph in history
Sunday, February 22
To date there have been 23 occupations in the UK related to the situation in Gaza.
Thursday, February 19
Soho: Justice prevails against prejudice and witch-hunts!

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