Miriam Makeba Quotes

I was born in a poor country. I was poor, but I lived all my life with what I had. I didn’t spend more than I had. Cape Verde is not the only place where there are poor people

...entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.

It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.

I would like for my books to have been recognized posthumously, at least in capitalist countries, where they turn you into a kind of merchandise.

It is said that heaven does not create one man above or below another man. Any existing distinction between the wise and the stupid, between the rich and the poor, comes down to a matter of education.

It's a tragedy that a lot of people know more about Shakespeare than about Cao Xueqin.

Richard II by William Shakespeare

You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.

We were promised a better life in our home countries when we were told that privatized water and electricity would make things run more efficiently instead the quality remained almost the same and the price was increased until it became an unaffordable luxury

Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children … It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.

Each individual man and each individual country, according to the principles of natural reason, is free from bondage. Consequently, if there is some threat that might infringe upon a country’s freedom, then that country should not hesitate even to take up arms against all the countries of the world.

Real tragedy is never resolved. It goes on hopelessly forever. Conventional tragedy is too easy. The hero dies and we feel a purging of the emotions. A real tragedy takes place in a corner, in an untidy spot, to quote W. H. Auden.

Poverty is a virtue which one can teach oneself.

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes.

We were poor. If I wasn't a boy, I wouldn't have had nothing to play with.

They are reduced to wrongdoers of the mind
Merely because: They misused parables.
(...)
They are people who have missed life, stuck in a place where life is misunderstood
Everything they have gone through —— is a mere tragedy of birth