A Quote by Michael Eric Dyson

Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.

Michael Eric Dyson

Quote Topics

Wisdom About America American Better Bus Conventional Conventional Wisdom Deserve Deserve Better Disaster Exposing Group Hurricane Hurricane Katrina Katrina Learn Lesson Levees Ought Out Overwhelmed People Poor Prosperity Shared Something Than Ticket Town Want

Quote Author

Michael Eric Dyson
American - Author
Born: October 23, 1958

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

Hurricane Katrina, coupled with Hurricane Rita, which came promptly on Katrina's heels, claimed more than 1,200 American lives. Together, they caused more than $200 billion in damage.

Ellen Tauscher

Hurricane Katrina is without question the worst natural disaster in American history.

Douglas Brinkley

I wrote these two songs ["Coming Out of the Dark" and "Always Tomorrow"] as a celebration of hope. And I want to send it out to all of those people who are suffering through this terrible disaster [Hurricane Katrina], and please know that you are not alone - and you will not be.

Gloria Estefan

The world does not have time to be with the poor, to learn with the poor, to listen to the poor. To listen to the poor is an exercise of great discipline, but such listening surely is what is required if charity is not to become a hatred of the poor for being poor.

Stanley Hauerwas

We're very privileged as Americans - it's easy to forget about the rest of the world and to think that your problems are the most important problems. Even poor people in America live better than poor people most everywhere else.

Madonna Ciccone

We Democrats think the country works better with a strong middle class, real opportunities for poor people to work their way into it and a relentless focus on the future, with business and government working together to promote growth and broadly shared prosperity. We think "we're all in this together" is a better philosophy than "you're on your own."

William J. Clinton

President Obama's approach embodies the values, the ideas and the direction America has to take to build the 21st-century version of the American Dream: a nation of shared opportunities, shared responsibilities, shared prosperity, a shared sense of community.

William J. Clinton

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

I don't want there to be this separation between the rich and poor. I may be part of the three percent because I've been fortunate and done well for myself, but I will never forget about the 97 percent. That was me growing up. I was so poor I dreamt about being just 'regular poor,' not 'poor, poor.'

Marlon Wayans

A considerable proportion of the developed world's prosperity rests on paying the lowest possible prices for the poor countries' primary products and on exporting high-cost capital and finished goods to those countries. Continuation of this kind of prosperity requires continuation of the relative gap between developed and underdeveloped countries - it means keeping poor people poor. Increasingly, the impoverished masses are understanding that the prosperity of the developed countries and of the privileged minorities in their own countries is founded on their poverty.

Philip Agee

In Asia, we live within our means. So when we are poor, we live as poor people. I think that is a lesson that Europe can learn from Asia.

Mahathir Mohamad

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.