The pavement and the road are crowded with purchasers and street-sellers. The housewife in her thick shawl, with the market-basket on her arm, walks slowly on, stopping now to look at the stall of caps, and now to cheapen a bunch of greens. Little boys, holding three or four onions in their hand, creep between the people, wriggling their way through every interstice, and asking for custom in whining tones, as if seeking charity. Then the tumult of the thousand different cries of the eager dealers, all shouting at the top of their voices, at one and the same time, is almost bewildering. ‘So-old again,’ roars one. ‘Chestnuts all ’ot, a penny a score,’ bawls another. ‘An ‘aypenny a skin, blacking,’ squeaks a boy. ‘Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy – bu-u-uy!’ cries the butcher. ‘Half-quire of paper for a penny,’ bellows the street stationer. ‘An ’aypenny a lot ing-uns.’ ‘Twopence a pound grapes.’ ‘Three a penny Yarmouth bloaters.’ ‘Who’ll buy a bonnet for fourpence?’ ‘Pick ’em out cheap here! three pair for a halfpenny, bootlaces.’ ‘Now’s your time! beautiful whelks, a penny a lot.’ ‘Here’s ha’p’orths,’ shouts the perambulating confectioner. ‘Come and look at ’em! Here’s toasters!’ bellows one with a Yarmouth bloater stuck on a toasting-fork. ‘Penny a lot, fine russets,’ calls the apple woman: and so the Babel goes on.' Henry Mayhew, Victorian social essay
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
While it is correct to insist that rights should be balanced by obligations, there is a dangerous tendency for obligations – to search for work, to save for pensions – to be imposed upon the poor, while rights – to enjoy low marginal rates of tax, to opt out into privileged private education – are voluntarily exercised by the rich. Will Hutton, The State to Come
24.9% of American children live in poverty, while the proportions in Germany, France and Italy are 8.6, 7.4 and 10.5%. And once born on the wrong side of the tracks, Americans are more likely to stay there than their counterparts in Europe. Those born to better-off families are more likely to stay better off. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and a serfdom of the poor – the inevitable result of a twenty-year erosion of its social contract. Will Hutton
No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable. Adam Smith
The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations. Adam Smith
To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole. Barach Spinoza
To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it. E M Forster, Howard’s End
Ted: The poor really got on his [Jack] nerves.
Dougal: And the needy. Father Ted s2e15: New Jack City, Channel 4 1996
I mean we hear an awful lot of lefty whinging about the NHS waiting lists. Well the answer’s simple. Shut down the Health Service. Result? No more waiting lists. You see, in the good old days you were poor, you got ill, and you died. And yet these days people seem to think they have some God-give right to be cured! And what is the result of this sloppy Socialist thinking, hmm? More poor people! In contrast my policies would eradicate poor people! Thereby eliminating poverty! And they say we Conservatives have no heart! Thank you very much! The New Statesman s1e5: Friends of St James, ITV 1987
Nobody suffers like the poor. Barfly 1987 starring Mickey Rourke & Faye Dunaway & Alice Krige & J C Quinn & Frank Stallone & Jack Nance & Sandy Martin & Roberta Bassin & Gloria LeRoy & Joe Unger & Harry Cohn & Charles Bukowski et al, director Barbet Schroeder, Rourke
I’ve been so disgustingly poor all my life. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958 starring Paul Newman & Elizabeth Taylor & Burl Ives & Judith Anderson & Jack Carson & Madeleine Sherwood & Larry Gates & Vaughn Taylor, director Richard Brooks
You don’t know what it’s like to have to suck up to people you can’t stand just because they’ve got money. ibid.
America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ 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 the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter-house-Five
The poor and the unemployed were looking for anything to eat. Simon Schama, A History of Britain s3e1: Forces of Nature, BBC 2002
I’m as poor as a church mouse that’s just had an enormous tax bill on the very day his wife’s ran off with another mouse taking all the cheese. Blackadder III: Any & Amiability, Blackadder to Prince, BBC 1987
The poor are carrying the burden of your war. Robert Kennedy and His Times starring Brad Davis & Veronica Cartwright & Cliff de Young & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Joe Pantoliano & Harris Yulin & Jeffrey Tambor & Jack Warden & River Pheonix & Jason Bateman et al, director Marvin J Chomsky, RFK, CBS 1985
And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. Martin Luther King, attributed
I remember thinking during the Katrina flood, Why is it always the poor who have to suffer the misery? Why is it never Bernie Madoff up on the roof screaming for help? Or the head of Citibank or the hedge-fund guys at Goldman Sachs, or the CEO of AIG? Never is these guys, is it? It’s always those who never got a slice of the pie. ’Cause these men took it all. And left them with nothing. Left them to die. Michael Moore, Capitalism: A Love Story
The labouring poor, in spite of double pay,
Are saucy, mutinous, and beggarly;
So lavish of their money and their time,
That want of forecast is the nation’s crime.
Good drunken company is their delight;
And what they get by day they spend by night.
Dull thinking seldom does their heads engage,
But drink their youth away, and hurry on old age. Daniel Defoe, The True-Born Englishman
We have the finest poor people in the world. Don’t we? Equipped with sky digital. Al Murray: The Pub Landlord: My Gaff, My Rules, London’s Playhouse Theatre, Al
Why do we have an economy where the poor have to pay so the rich won’t lose money? Reds 1981 starring Warren Beatty & Diane Keaton & Jack Nicholson & Gene Hackman & Edward Herrmann & Jerzy Kosinski & Paul Sorvino & Maureen Stapleton & Nicolas Coster & William Daniels & E Emmet Walsh & Ian Wolfe & Bessie Love et al, director Warren Beatty, him to her
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
I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, far more revolutionary than socialist ideas or anybody else’s idea, but if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community. And this idea of choice which capital talks about all the time – you’ve got to have a choice. Choice depends on the freedom to choose. And if you’re shackled with debt you don’t have a freedom to choose ... I think that if poor here in Britain or in the United States turned out and voted for people who really represented their interests, there would be a real democratic revolution. Tony Benn MP, interview Michael Moore, Sicko 2007
You see I think there are two ways of keeping people controlled: first of all, frighten people; and secondly demoralise them. An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern ... The top one per cent of the world’s population own 80 per cent of the world’s wealth – it’s incredible that people put up with it. But, they are poor, they are demoralised, they are frightened. ibid.
It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear. The Representatives in England appear now to act as if they were afraid to do right, even in part, lest it should awaken the nation to a sense of all the wrongs it has endured. This case serves to shew that the same conduct that best constitutes the safety of an individual, namely, a strict adherence to principle, constitutes also the safety of a Government, and that without it safety is but an empty name. When the rich plunder the poor of his rights, it becomes an example of the poor to plunder the rich of his property, for the rights of the one are as much property to him as wealth is property to the other and the little all is as dear as the much. It is only by setting out on just principles that men are trained to be just to each other; and it will always be found, that when the rich protect the rights of the poor, the poor will protect the property of the rich. But the guarantee, to be effectual, must be parliamentarily reciprocal. Thomas Paine, 1792