A Quote by Norman Thomas

The doctrine of thrift for the poor is dumb and cruel, like advising them to try and lift themselves by their bootstraps.

Norman Thomas

Quote Topics

Advising Bootstraps Cruel Doctrine Dumb Lift Like Poor Them Themselves Thrift Try

Quote Author

Norman Thomas
American - Activist
November 20, 1884 - December 19, 1968

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

Oscar Wilde

It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Little by little, the U.S. has allowed questionable domestic policies to chip away at the only hope poor students have at a better future. The Right Wing loves to distract voters from these realities by making it seem as though the poor remain so because they lack the work ethic necessary to 'pull themselves up by their bootstraps.'

Ana Kasparian

The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Can't you see that I'm only advising you to beg yourself not to be so dumb

Petronius

?It is a cruel injustice to tell a bootless man to pull himself up by his bootstraps.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Microloans enable the poor to lift themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship.

Pierre Omidyar

I try to be fair, and I try not to be cruel or mean when I'm interviewing someone. But you have to push a few buttons. When you're on a roll and you're making a person laugh, you can say things that are truthful about them, and then they'll laugh at them as well. Otherwise, it might just sound like you're attacking them.

Mark Critch

I'm beginning to believe that there are angels disguised as men who pass themselves off as such and who inhabit the earth for a while to console and lift up with them toward heaven the poor, exhausted and saddened souls who were ready to perish here below.

George Sand

They say, 'Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.' They don't realize that not everybody's bootstraps are the same length.

Andrew Mitchell

I think we have systematically and critically harmed ourselves and many young people by advising them not to try things.

Maya Angelou

If you look at many of the women who find themselves with cold, distant, difficult, cruel men, it's because they had cold, distant, difficult, cruel fathers who made them feel that there was no alternative or, at a minimum, who made them choose someone like their father in order to change in this other man what they couldn't change in their fathers.

Gloria Steinem

Poor people aren't making dumb decisions because they are dumb, but because they're living in a context in which anyone would make dumb decisions.

Rutger Bregman

The doctrine of foreordination is not a doctrine of repose; instead, it is a doctrine for second- and third-milers, and it will draw out of them the last full measure of devotion. It is a doctrine for the deep believer but it will bring only scorn from the skeptic.

Neal A. Maxwell

I don't want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it's for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them.