A Quote by Jerome K. Jerome

It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn't be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.

Jerome K. Jerome

Quote Topics

Ashamed Blunder Crime Despised Easy Enough Man Men Over Poor Poor Man Poverty Punished Say Though Were Whole Whole World World

Quote Author

Jerome K. Jerome
English - Author
May 2, 1859 - June 14, 1927

I think there is a lot of crime caused by desperation, and it doesn't mean that people commit crime because they're poor, but certainly a lot of people who are poor commit crime and they might not if they weren't poor. You understand the difference there? That's not news, but it comes up when I hear people say poverty doesn't affect crime - that crime is still going down in America even though the economy is bad.

Peter Moskos

Slavery's crime against humanity did not begin when one people defeated and enslaved its enemies (though of course this was bad enough), but when slavery became an institution in which some men were 'born' free and others slave, when it was forgotten that it was man who had deprived his fellow-men of freedom, and when the sanction for the crime was attributed to nature.

Hannah Arendt

Seek the simplest in all things, in food, clothing, without being ashamed of poverty. For a great part of the world lives in poverty. Do not say, "I am the son of a rich man. It is shameful for me to be in poverty." Christ, your Heavenly Father, Who gave birth to you in the baptistery, is not in worldly riches. Rather he walked in poverty and had nowhere to lay His head.

Gennadius of Constantinople

The crime should be punished no matter whether poverty or wealth caused it to occur, because the crime is wrong.

Ernest Van den Haag

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves... 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 American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters.

Kurt Vonnegut

A greater poverty than that caused by lack of money is the poverty of unawareness. Men and women go about the world unaware of the beauty, the goodness, the glories in it. Their souls are poor. It is better to have a poor pocketbook than to suffer from a poor soul.

Thomas Dreier

If we Christians would join the Wise Men, we must close our eyes to all that glitters before the world and look rather on the despised and foolish things, help the poor, comfort the despised, and aid the neighbor in his need.

Martin Luther

Men: Stand in solidarity with women. Women, if you were born female, you were born on a battlefield. You will be punished for even saying that out loud, but the grim truth is you're going to be punished no matter what for the 'sin' of being female. Battering is the most commonly committed violent crime in the United States. That's a man beating a woman. Globally, half of all women will experience life-threatening violence from a man. Half. That's more hatred than I can comprehend. Right now, that battlefield is such a slaughter that we can't even collect our wounded.

Lierre Keith

Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God's laws-it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man's injustice to his fellow man.

Leo Tolstoy

The poor man wishes to conceal his poverty, and the rich man his wealth: the former fears lest he be despised, the latter lest he be plundered.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

The tenets of [the Christian life] seem paradoxes to carnal men; as first, that a Christian is the only freeman, and other men are slaves; that he is the only rich man, though never so poor in the world; that he is the only beautiful man, though outwardly never so deformed; that he is the only happy man in the midst of all his miseries.

Richard Sibbes

Because they [Americans] want to be thought of as a rich nation, they are very ashamed of this place [Appalachia] that has come to represent poverty, even though poverty exists all over the country, and exists as much in urban areas as it does in rural, if not more.

Silas House

It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself!

Thomas Merton

As the data from the past decade clarify, there is no evidence that poverty causes crime but a great deal of evidence that crime causes poverty. By aligning themselves against the police, against commonsense tactics like stop and frisk, against metal detectors in public housing, against swift and certain punishment, and for a broad array of legal protections for accused criminals, liberals helped to aggrieve the lives of the poor and society as a whole.

Mona Charen

It was a white-collar crime.” Illium gave her an odd look. “In the human world, such crimes are lightly punished, though they harm hundreds, leading some to choose death out of despair, while the man who beats a single person is considered the worse criminal.