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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index P > Category: Poverty

Poverty Quotes (18 quotes)

‘Endow scientific research and we shall know the truth, when and where it is possible to ascertain it;’' but the counterblast is at hand: ‘To endow research is merely to encourage the research for endowment; the true man of science will not be held back by poverty, and if science is of use to us, it will pay for itself.’ Such are but a few samples of the conflict of opinion which we find raging around us.
— Karl Pearson
The Grammar of Science (1892), 5.
Science quotes on:  |  Conflict (18)  |  Encouragement (10)  |  Endowment (3)  |  Knowledge (593)  |  Men Of Science (88)  |  Mere (7)  |  Opinion (72)  |  Payment (3)  |  Possibility (59)  |  Rage (2)  |  Research (319)  |  Sample (4)  |  Truth (399)  |  Usefulness (49)

Between the frontiers of the three super—states Eurasia, Oceania, and Eastasia, and not permanently in possession of any of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hongkong. These territories contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the Middle East or Southern India or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of the bodies of hundreds of millions of ill-paid and hardworking coolies, expended by their conquerors like so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control more labour, to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control...
Thus George Orwell—in his only reference to the less-developed world.
I wish I could disagree with him. Orwell may have erred in not anticipating the withering of direct colonial controls within the 'quadrilateral' he speaks about; he may not quite have gauged the vehemence of urges to political self-assertion. Nor, dare I hope, was he right in the sombre picture of conscious and heartless exploitation he has painted. But he did not err in predicting persisting poverty and hunger and overcrowding in 1984 among the less privileged nations.
I would like to live to regret my words but twenty years from now, I am positive, the less-developed world will be as hungry, as relatively undeveloped, and as desperately poor, as today.
— Abdus Salam
'The Less-Developed World: How Can We be Optimists?' (1964). Reprinted in Ideals and Realities (1984), xv-xvi. Referencing a misquote from George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four (1949), Ch. 9.
Science quotes on:  |  Coal (17)  |  Control (37)  |  Exploitation (2)  |  Labour (21)  |  Oil (16)  |  Regret (8)  |  Territory (6)

But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses.
— Hans Zinsser
Rats, Lice and History (1934), 13-4.
Science quotes on:  |  Bacteria (16)  |  Civilization (77)  |  Defense (6)  |  Famine (5)  |  Flea (5)  |  Infection (13)  |  Mosquito (2)  |  Neglect (6)  |  Pounce (3)  |  Protozoa (2)  |  Shadow (13)  |  Tick (3)  |  Virus (12)  |  War (69)

But poverty, though it does not prevent the generation, is extremely unfavourable to the rearing of children. The tender plant is produced, but in so cold a soil, and so severe a climate, soon withers and dies.
— Adam Smith
An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). In The Works of Adam Smith (1812), Vol. 2, 120.
Science quotes on:  |  Birth (42)  |  Child (66)  |  Climate (23)  |  Cold (21)  |  Death (168)  |  Generation (39)  |  Plant (84)  |  Rear (2)  |  Severe (3)  |  Soil (22)

He who attempts to draw any conclusion whatever as to the nation's wealth or poverty from the mere fact of a favorable or unfavorable Balance of Trade, has not grasped the first fundamental principle of Political Economy.
— Ernst Engel
As quoted by Richard Theodore Ely in 'Transfers of Economic Goods, Including, as Agents of Transfers, Money, Credit, and Banking', Political Economy, Political Science and Sociology: a Practical and Scientific Presentation of Social and Economic Subjects (1899), 485. Engel's statement is presented in quotation marks, but since the author, Ely, qualifies it with 'Dr. Ernst Engel, once made the following observation at a meeting of a "Seminary," of which the writer was a member at the time.' This suggests the quote is only given as a recollection, and not Engel's exact words.
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I have been branded with folly and madness for attempting what the world calls impossibilities, and even from the great engineer, the late James Watt, who said ... that I deserved hanging for bringing into use the high-pressure engine. This has so far been my reward from the public; but should this be all, I shall be satisfied by the great secret pleasure and laudable pride that I feel in my own breast from having been the instrument of bringing forward new principles and new arrangements of boundless value to my country, and however much I may be straitened in pecuniary circumstances, the great honour of being a useful subject can never be taken from me, which far exceeds riches.
— Richard Trevithick
From letter to Davies Gilbert, written a few months before Trevithick's last illness. Quoted in Francis Trevithick, Life of Richard Trevithick: With an Account of his Inventions (1872), Vol. 2, 395-6.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (31)  |  Biography (196)  |  Boundless (3)  |  Engineer (25)  |  Folly (9)  |  Hanging (2)  |  Honour (19)  |  Impossibility (29)  |  Invention (143)  |  Madness (11)  |  Pleasure (45)  |  Pressure (17)  |  Pride (12)  |  Public (21)  |  Reward (15)  |  Riches (5)  |  Satisfaction (25)  |  Steam Engine (20)  |  Use (41)  |  Value (50)  |  James Watt (6)

If the misery of our poor is caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
— Charles Darwin
Journal of Researches

In the end, poverty, putridity and pestilence; work, wealth and worry; health, happiness and hell, all simmer down into village problems.
— Martin H. Fischer
Science quotes on:  |  Happiness (55)  |  Health (85)  |  Hell (12)  |  Money (82)  |  Pestilence (6)  |  Problem (149)  |  Work (152)

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... the future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.
— Jawaharlal (Pandit) Nehru)
Quoted in Atma Ram, 'The Making of Optical Glass in India: Its Lessons for Industrial Development', Proceedings of ihe National Institute of Sciences of India (1961), 27, 564-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Aid (7)  |  Country (33)  |  Custom (6)  |  Friend (15)  |  Future (84)  |  Hunger (5)  |  Ignore (6)  |  Illiteracy (2)  |  Problem (149)  |  Resource (8)  |  Sanitation (2)  |  Science (754)  |  Superstition (31)  |  Tradition (16)  |  Waste (21)  |  Wealth (23)

One of the largest promises of science is, that the sum of human happiness will be increased, ignorance destroyed, and, with ignorance, prejudice and superstition, and that great truth taught to all, that this world and all it contains were meant for our use and service; and that where nature by her own laws has defined the limits of original unfitness, science may by extract so modify those limits as to render wholesome that which by natural wildness was hurtful, and nutritious that which by natural poverty was unnourishing. We do not yet know half that chemistry may do by way of increasing our food.
— Anonymous
'Common Cookery'. Household Words (26 Jan 1856), 13, 45. An English weekly magazine edited by Charles Dickens.
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Poverty is a virtue greatly exaggerated by physicians no longer forced to practise it.
— Anonymous
Science quotes on:  |  Money (82)  |  Physician (167)

Social reform aims to improve the condition of the poor by worsening the condition of the rich.
— Martin H. Fischer
Science quotes on:  |  Reform (5)  |  Rich (10)  |  Wealth (23)

The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty—not marble floors and foundations.
— Martin H. Fischer
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Science quotes on:  |  Education (154)  |  Physician (167)  |  Wealth (23)

The laws expressing the relations between energy and matter are, however, not solely of importance in pure science. They necessarily come first in order ... in the whole record of human experience, and they control, in the last resort, the rise or fall of political systems, the freedom or bondage of nations, the movements of commerce and industry, the origin of wealth and poverty, and the general physical welfare of the race.
— Frederick Soddy
In Matter and Energy (1912), 10-11.
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The world is a very different one now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.
— John F. Kennedy
Inaugural address (1961). Robert G. Torricelli and Andrew Carroll, In Our Own words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century (1999), 222.
Science quotes on:  |  Atomic Bomb (53)  |  Life (379)  |  Power (70)  |  World (165)

Think of a single problem confronting the world today. Disease, poverty, global warming… If the problem is going to be solved, it is science that is going to solve it. Scientists tend to be unappreciated in the world at large, but you can hardly overstate the importance of the work they do. If anyone ever cures cancer, it will be a guy with a science degree. Or a woman with a science degree.
— Bill Bryson
Quoted in Max Davidson, 'Bill Bryson: Have faith, science can solve our problems', Daily Telegraph (26 Sep 2010)
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What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
— Herbert Alexander Simon
'Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World', in Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest (1971), 40-41.
Science quotes on:  |  Attention (30)  |  Consumption (5)  |  Efficiency (13)  |  Information (36)  |  Obvious (20)  |  Recipient (2)  |  Source (26)  |  Wealth (23)

When rich men are thus brought to regard themselves as trustees, and poor men learn to be industrious, economical, temperate, self-denying, and diligent in the acquisition of knowledge, then the deplorable strife between capital and labor, tending to destroy their fundamental, necessary, and irrefragable harmony will cease, and the world will no longer be afflicted with such unnatural industrial conflicts as we have seen during the past century...
— Peter Cooper
Address (31 May 1871) to the 12th annual commencement at the Cooper Union, honoring his 80th birthday, in New York City Mission and Tract Society, Annual report of the New York City Mission and Tract Society (1872), 69.
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