Tao Te Ching
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Poverty
In our era of rampant Capitalism as the fastest-growing and most popular religion, the connotations of “poverty” have taken on a much more sinister semblance. When wealth is elevated above all virtues, poverty sinks to the bottom. Epitomized by St. Francis, the Christian tradition characterizes poverty as a virtue and vow, a voluntary acceptance of simplicity saying in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The Buddha and an abundance of spiritual saints from almost all traditions left riches for a simple life of poverty. When criticized by Churchill for only wearing a loincloth for a meeting with the Kind of England, Gandhi answered, “Don’t worry, the King will be wearing enough clothes for both of us!” The failure of modern affluence and materialistic consumerism to create happiness is reflected in the unprecedented American drug and alcoholism statistics, the high divorce and suicide rates, obesity, the unparalleled incarceration numbers, and the large percentage of citizens willing to follow corrupt but charismatic political leaders. Instead of recognizing the injustice of today’s extreme income inequalities—and the causes so deeply rooted in greed, exploitation, and environmental pillage—most of the rich only continue to arm-twist politicians into even more tax breaks and incentives. According to a recent Oxfam report, just the annual increase in the richest 100 people’s net worth is enough to end extreme world poverty four times. Basic human needs could be easily met but human greed is hypnotically unlimited, inexhaustible, socially and environmentally calamitous.
Quotes (79)
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
“One who is by nature daring and is suffering from poverty will not long be lawful.”
“No one needs to be ashamed of poverty. The real shame is not taking practical measures to escape from it.”
“Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.”
“Small appetite makes poverty equivalent to wealth.”
“[citizens] considered poverty among their fellow citizens as their own disgrace and measured their well-being not by being able to outdo each other, but by the absence of want among the whole people”
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
“He does not struggle to make money and does not make a virtue of poverty. He goes his way without relying on others and does not pride himself on walking alone.”
“He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.”
“A hungry people listens not to reason, nor cares for justice, nor is bent by any prayers.”
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
“the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, 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.”
“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
“Prohibitions are intended to put an end to poverty, and yet the people become poorer. Tools are intended to strengthen the country, and yet the country becomes weaker and more chaotic. This is due to cultivating the branches instead of the roots.”
“An old lady who lives to the east got rich a few years ago. Before poorer than me,now she mocks my poverty. She laughs that I’m behind, I laugh that she’s ahead. It seems we can’t stop laughing from the east and from the west.”
“Unless we are crushed by conditions... unless our own mouths water from hunger, we never appreciate a poor man's need to hoard.”
“The natural endowment of all beings is complete in itself. Poverty does not reduce it. Wealth does not enlarge it. But fools abandon this treasure to chase trash.”
“When you've cooked the marrow of the sun and moon, the pearl is so bright you don't worry about poverty.”
“Much of the poverty and distress of our times arises from the fact that women are kept like domestic animals or house plants for purposes of gratification.”
“If a man has desires but cannot satisfy them, or has money but does not use it, he is exactly the same as a poor man... When it comes to this point, there is no difference between poverty and wealth.”
“Nor can they understand why a totally useless substance like gold should now, all over the world, be considered far more important than human beings, who gave it such value as it has, purely for their own convenience.”
“The first remedy or prevention of revolt and sedition to to remove by all means possible want and poverty.”
“The art of being happy though poor consists in one phrase, to think ‘it could be worse.’ The same situation can look like hell to one person and like paradise to another.”
“The art of being happy though poor consists in one phrase, to think ‘it could be worse.’ The same situation can look like hell to one person and like paradise to another.”
“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloth and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.”
“He who is plenteously provided for from within, needs but little from without.”
“Poverty and slavery are thus only two forms of—one might almost say two words for—the same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others”
“If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
“All ought to refrain from marriage who cannot avoid abject poverty for their children.”
“Money has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper.”
“The world has proclaimed freedom but what do we see in this? Our culture says, 'try to satisfy all of your desires and even multiply them' but what follows from this? In the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; in the poor, dissatisfaction, envy, and crime.”
“When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.”
“I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.”
“The praise of poverty needs to be once more boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life”
“The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.”
“The poor have to labor in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to be in the streets, and to steal bread.”
“I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life.”
“Instead of sympathizing with the poor and abolishing the rich, we must ruthlessly abolish the poor by raising their standard of life... Lack of money is the root of all evil... What is the matter with the poor is Poverty: what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.”
“Wealth is dismal and poverty cruel unless both are festive. There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.”
“Because of poverty, we must adopt the capitalist means of production to develop our resources to get rich. However, if we ignore the issue of social justice at the beginning of China's industrialization, we will sow the seeds of class warfare in the future.”
“Poverty—more generous than wealth—gives women much more than the clothes they cannot buy: that is the desire for those clothes, which leads to the only true, detailed, and profound knowledge of them.”
“The conquest of the air marked a decisive advance for humanity. Yet we grasped at once the opportunity it offered to kill and destroy from the skies…. and obliged us to seek refuge underground like a hunted animal… the more the superman gains in strength, the poorer he becomes… we are becoming inhuman to the extent that we become supermen.”
“My parents always told me nobody had to be poor—that they wouldn't be if they weren't shiftless or didn't spend everything they earned on drink. I don't understand how Mama and Papa could be so mistaken!”
“He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra.”
“The hopes of the Republic cannot forever tolerate either undeserved poverty or self-serving wealth.”
“It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth that you shall find abundance and be satisfied - but only if in love and kindly justice or it will only lead some to greed and others to hunger”
“there was poverty, and as if this were not enough, the pride which demanded that no one discover the poverty.”
“Art without science is poverty, and science without art is barbarism. Let every science strive to fulfill itself in beauty or wisdom, and let us rejoice when a science becomes an art.”
“We seek victory—not over any nation or people—but over ignorance, poverty, disease, and human degradation wherever they may be found.”
“The poor have given to the rich palaces and yachts, an almost infinite freedom to indulge their doubtful taste... under which have been hidden the excess labor and extravagant misery of the poor.”
“It is deliberate policy to keep even the favored groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.”
“The affluent societies of today make such exorbitant demands on the world’s resources, create ecological dangers of such intensity, and produce such a high level of neurosis among their populations, that they cannot possibly serve as a model”
“21st century technology makes have and have-not inequities, as well as their rationales, anachronistic.”
“There were millions of tons of food around, but it was not profitable to transport it, to sell it. Warehouses were full of clothing, but people could not afford it. There were lots of houses, but they stayed empty because people couldn't pay the rent, had been evicted, and now lived in shacks in quickly formed 'Hooversvilles' built on garbage dumps.”
“History will judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless.”
“People are not hungry because there is no food in the world. There is plenty of it; there is a surplus in fact. But between those who want to eat and the bursting warehouses stands a tall obstacle indeed: politics.”
“We can't leave people in abject poverty, so we need to raise the standard of living for 80% of the world's people, while bringing it down considerably for the 20% who are destroying our natural resources.”
“Very powerful forces are adamantly opposed to creating full employment [because] if enacted would remove ‘wage pressure’ — the fear struck into the hearts of the poor, of anyone who feared becoming poor, almost everyone on Earth.”
“The region of the world that should be naturally rich has made itself poor by repeatedly letting the past bury the future and the region that is naturally poor has made itself rich by letting the future bury the past.”
“The poor may not always be with us. The world is about a hundred times wealthier today than it was two centuries ago, and the prosperity is becoming more evenly distributed across countries and people. Within the lifetimes of most readers, the rate of extreme poverty could approach zero.”
“Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money's gone...
Nowhere to go, nowhere to go.”
“Destitution and the desires of the destitute are endless. Even the desires of the wealthy are endless... the miser, the self, is the main culprit, providing nothing but a feeling of poverty.”
“Proud families spend fortunes on a one-day wedding ceremony for a marriage that may or may not last, while on the same day, in the same village, people are dying of starvation.”
“An estimated 11 million people in Africa will die of famine this year. Approximately, two-thirds of all adults and one-third of all children in the United States are now overweight; of these, nearly 50% of adults and 16% of children are obese. Though, we live in an age of globalization, our world still has incredible contradictions.”
“We should educate people in the Third World to understand that it's not poverty to live outside the confines of consumer society. In fact, it is richer for the human spirit and the environment.”
“Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.”
“Each year the US population spends more money on diets than the amount needed to feed all the hungry people in the rest of the world.”
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