A Quote by John Lee Hooker

Poor people have the blues because they're poor and hungry. Rich people can't sleep at night because they're trying to hold on to their money and everything they have.

John Lee Hooker

Quote Topics

Because Blues Can't Sleep Everything Hold Hungry Money Night People Poor Poor People Rich Rich People Sleep Trying

Quote Author

John Lee Hooker
American - Musician
August 22, 1917 - June 21, 2001

I've found that a lot of successful poker players grew up poor. And I'm convinced that poor people have a risk tolerance that rich people don't have because poor people fundamentally don't value money that much because they're used to not having it.

Chamath Palihapitiya

God wants us to show compassion and understanding toward the unemployed or the poor not because they are poor, but because poor people, with help from those who are already successful, can become rich. And when the poor become rich, all will benefit, because in our modern economy new unemployment is the first sign of economic growth.

Paul Zane Pilzer

If the "rich" were swarming into poor neighborhoods and beating the poor until they coughed up the dimes they swallowed for safekeeping, yes, this would be a transfer of income from the poor to the rich. But allowing taxpayers to keep more of their money does not qualify as taking it from the poor - unless you believe that the poor have a moral claim to the money other people earn.

James Lileks

In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.

Margaret Thatcher

It isn't the rich people's fault that poor people are poor. Poor people who get an education and work hard in this country will stop being poor. That should be the goal for all poor people everywhere.

Ben Stein

The Democrats say the rich are rich because they stole all of their money or somehow fleeced the poor for all of their money. "If it weren't for these cheating, skunk, lying, rich people, you poor people would have the money! You remember when you had this, right? You remember when you had that house on the beach and your Rolls-Royce, and then one day some rich guy came over and stole it all from you? You remember that? So you want to vote for Obama and the Democrats to get your house back and your Rolls-Royce 'cause you remember when Koch brothers came and took it from you."

Rush Limbaugh

I went to see Chris Rock on Saturday night here in Atlanta, and he made a statement in his comedy. He said, look, when you're the big person, when you're the rich person, poor people can say stuff about you, but it's downright wrong and brutal for rich people to beat up on poor people. He said people who are larger can lampoon people who are skinnier, but not the opposite.

Michael Eric Dyson

Growing richer every day, for as rich and poor are relative terms, when the rich are growing poor, it is pretty much the same as if the poor were growing rich. Nobody is poor when the distinction between rich and poor is destroyed.

James L. Petigru

The sad fact is that people are poor because they have not yet decided to be rich. People are overweight and unfit because they have not yet decided to be thin and fit. People are inefficient time wasters because they haven't yet decided to be highly productive in everything they do.

Brian Tracy

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.

Wilbur Smith

One of the reasons inequality gets so deep in this country is that everyone wants to be rich. That's the American ideal. Poor people don't like talking about poverty because even though they might live in the projects surrounded by other poor people and have, like, ten dollars in the bank, they don't like to think of themselves as poor.

Jay-Z

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I'm trying to get people to see that we are our brother's keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.

B. B. King

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.