Life can be full of hardships, and it can be made even harder to live day by day when in poverty. It's said that education is the key to success, but what if poverty is the key reason for people not receiving it?
That’s why it’s truly important for the nation to come together and give its people the quality education that they deserve — which will, in turn, pave the way for a more progressive future and society.
Here are some really powerful quotes about poverty and education that will make you realize just how vital the former is in facing the latter and how we should never underestimate the power of knowledge.
Read on and enjoy!
Quotes About Poverty & Education That’ll Make You Think
1. “The country where education is valued not as a formality but as a pride of the country is never poor.” — Nitin Namdeo
2. “Think about it: Every educated person is not rich, but almost every education person has a job and a way out of poverty. So education is a fundamental solution to poverty.” — Kathleen Blanco
3. “A quality education grants us the ability to fight the war on ignorance and poverty.” — Charles Rangel
4. “No wealth like education and no poverty like ignorance.” — Ali ibn Abi Talib
5. “Education promotes equality and lifts people out of poverty. It teaches children how to become good citizens. Education is not just for a privileged few, it is for everyone. It is a fundamental human right.” — Ban Ki-moon
6. “Inflation is taking up the poverty line, and poverty is not just economic but defined by way of health and education.” — Azim Premji
7. “Poverty in the world is a scandal. In a world where there is so much wealth, so many resources to feed everyone, it is unfathomable that there are so many hungry children, that there are so many children without an education, so many poor persons. Poverty today is a cry.” — Pope Francis
8. “It's hard to do it because you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period.” — Bill O'Reilly
9. “People think of education as something they can finish.” — Isaac Asimov
10. “Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development… For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right…. Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.” — Kofi Annan
11. “Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign. It does not flourish where there is ignorance and a lack of education and information.” — Frederik Willem de Klerk
12. “University can teach you skill and give you opportunity, but it can’t teach you sense, nor give you understanding. Sense and understanding are produced within one’s soul.” — C. JoyBell C.
13. “Poverty is not a lack of money but a lack of ability to make money.” — Nitin Namdeo
14. “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton
15. “Poverty comes not from lack of higher education but from lack of primary education.” — Nitin Namdeo
16. “Poverty is about low self-esteem and a lack of role models and opportunities. Without money, people resort to de-dignifying activities in order to support themselves. We free people through education and entrepreneurship. Freedom is self-determination, and you can't self-determine without understanding money and capitalism.” — John Hope Bryant
17. “Poverty is multidimensional. It extends beyond money incomes to education, health care, political participation and advancement of one's own culture and social organisation.” — Atal Bihari Vajpayee
18. “To reap a return in ten years, plant trees. To reap a return in 100, cultivate the people.” — Ho Chi Minh
19. “Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.” — John Ruskin
20. “It is always a much easier task to educate uneducated people than to re-educate the mis-educated.” — Herbert M. Shelton
21.“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.” — Henry David Thoreau
22. “Education should not be confined only to mathematics, science and arts; to eradicate ignorance and poverty, it is necessary to include spirituality in education.” — Nitin Namdeo
23. “It amazes me when education, religion and family values fail to create a human being.” — Anum Sattar
24. “One of the best ways to fight poverty and end violence is through education.” — Nitin Namdeo
25. “Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life.” — Bigham Young
26. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” — Robert Orben
Quotes About Poverty & Education By Famous People
27. “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.” — C.S. Lewis
28. “The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.” — Barack Obama
29. “To educate the peasantry, three things are needed: schools, schools and schools.” — Leo Tolstoy
30. “With guns, you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism.” — Malala Yousafzai
31. “It is, in fact, a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time — for we are bound by that — but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.” — T.S. Eliot
32. “Education is the key to opportunity. It's a ticket out of poverty.” — George H. W. Bush
33. “The best way to fight poverty is to empower people through access to quality education”. — John Legend
34. “So let us wage a global struggle against illiteracy, poverty, and terrorism, and let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons.” — Malala Yousafzai
35. “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” — Benjamin Franklin
36. “Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” — Leonardo da Vinci
37. “The very right to be human is denied every day to hundreds of millions of people as a result of poverty, the unavailability of basic necessities such as food, jobs, water and shelter, education, health care and a healthy environment.” — Nelson Mandela
38. “Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.” — John F. Kennedy
39. “The learning process continues until the day you die.” — Kirk Douglas
40. “The good news is we have the technology and the tools to alleviate poverty on a global scale. All that is standing in our way is education and will.” — Natalie Portman
41. “A well—educated mind will always have more questions than answers.” — Helen Keller
42. “The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.” — Plato
43. “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ― W.B. Yeats
44. “A quality education has the power to transform societies in a single generation, provide children with the protection they need from the hazards of poverty, labor exploitation and disease, and given them the knowledge, skills, and confidence to reach their full potential.” — Audrey Hepburn
45. “Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.” — Mark Twain
46. “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” — Victor Hugo
47. “The value of education is among the greatest of all human values.” — Virginia Woolf
48. “Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” — Joseph Stalin
49. “Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.” — Confucius
50. “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
51. “The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.” — Plato
52. “Some people get an education without going to college. The rest get it after they get out.” — Mark Twain
53. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” — Aristotle
54. “If you hate violence and don’t believe in politics, the only major remedy remaining is education.” — George Orwell
55. “Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” — Albert Einstein
56. “Education is teaching our children to desire the right things.” — Plato
“Give a bowl of rice to a man and you will feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow his own rice and you will save his life.” — Confucius
57. “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” — Aristotle
58. “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” — Aristotle
59. “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” — Albert Einstein
60. “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.” — Aristotle
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Quotes About Poverty & Education That’ll Inspire You To Spark Change
61. “Education is a battle against poverty that everyone should fight.” — Nitin Namdeo
62. “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” — Isaac Asimov
63. “The more that you read, the more things you will know, the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”— Dr. Seuss
64. “Everyone has the ability to stand on their own feet and make their mark in the world if given proper education.” — Nitin Namdeo
65. “As an empowerment right, education is the primary vehicle by which economically and socially marginalised adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty, and obtain the means to participate fully in their communities.” — Koichiro Matsuura
66. “Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.” — Chanakya
67. “It was a way out of poverty. It was a way to success. It was a way to education. And it was a way to a brighter day for me.” — Little Richard
68. “Education is beautification of the inner world and the outer world.” — Amit ray
69. “We know that there are several predisposing factors to gun violence: poverty, lack of education, lack of good parenting, lack of jobs, living in an environment where violence is seen every day, all the time. And children being born to children are likely to have all of these predisposing factors.” — Joycelyn Elders
70. “Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It’s about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life.” — Shakuntala Devi
71. “Only through education can the doors of countless possibilities be opened.” — Nitin Namdeo
72. “It is impossible to abolish poverty without abolishing ignorance.” — Nitin Namdeo
73. “If you know how to escape poverty, you are already well educated.” — Nitin Namdeo
Quotes About Poverty & Education That’ll Push You To Make A Difference
74. “Education is the best poverty eradication program.” — Nitin Namdeo
75. “The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.” — John Dewey
76. “Education isn’t for getting a job. It’s about developing yourself as a human being.” — Liz Berry
77. “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.” — George Washington Carver
78. “The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change.” — Carl Rogers
79. “Promoting education is an effort that is close to my heart. Illiteracy contributes to poverty; encouraging children to pick up a book is fundamental.” — Sasha Grey
80. “Nine-tenths of education is encouragement.” — Anatole France
81. “Fight for education and poverty, not for caste and religion.” — Nitin Namdeo
82. “Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.” — Louis L’Amour
83. “People need to be educated so that they can make intelligent moral choices.” — Gary L. Francione
84. “An educated nation is a powerful and prosperous nation.” — Nitin Namdeo
Quotes About Poverty & Education Everyone Should Ponder On
85. “Education is the capital through which all kinds of poverty can be eliminated.” — Nitin Namdeo
86. “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune.” — Jim Rohn
87. “If they took the idea that they could escape poverty through education, I think it would make a more basic and long—lasting change in the way things happen. What we need are positive, realistic goals and the willingness to work. Hard work and practical goals.” — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
88. “If there is still a lack of equality, there is still a lack of education.” — Nitin Namdeo
89. “It is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read.” — Ezra Taft Benson
90. “The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education.” — Paul Karl Feyerabend
91. “Healing comes from gathering wisdom from past actions and letting go of the pain that the education cost you.” — Caroline Myss
92. “The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” — Malcolm Forbes
93. “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” — Kofi Annan
94. “The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty—not marble floors and foundations.” — Martin H. Fischer
95. “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” — John Dewey
96. “An education is not so much about making a living as making a person.” — Tara Westover
97. “The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” — Sydney J. Harris
98. “Those who are ignorant curse fate for poverty and those who are educated make their own destiny.” — Nitin Namdeo
99. “As a child, I experienced firsthand the severe effects of poverty and illiteracy, especially upon women and children. My parents taught me the importance of education and that it was a key to improving an individual's life.” — Naveen Jain
100. “The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.” — Alexandra K. Trenfor
101. “An educated man should know everything about something and something about everything.” — Veronica Wedgwood
102. “Education…has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” — George Macaulay Trevelyan
103. “Without education, you cannot be a responsible person, and only a responsible person can keep himself out of poverty and violence.” — Nitin Namdeo
104. “Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.” — Ezra Pound
105. “There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.” — Steven Soderbergh
106. “Education is not about degree and diploma, it is all about knowledge and wisdom.” — Nitin Namdeo
107. “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” — Will Durant
Quotes About Poverty & Education For Young Leaders
108. “Not every educated person is rich but every educated person is capable of keeping himself out of poverty.” — Nitin Namdeo
109. “The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth.” — Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus
110. “Making systems work is the great task of my generation of physicians and scientists. But I would go further and say that making systems work—whether in healthcare, education, climate change, making a pathway out of poverty—is the great task of our generation as a whole.” — Atul Gawande
111. “Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.” — Edward Everett
112. “Education is the medium through which you learn to take responsibility for yourself as well as for others.” — Nitin Namdeo
113. “There is a power under your control that is greater than poverty, greater than the lack of education, greater than all your fears and superstitions combined. It is the power to take possession of your own mind and direct it to whatever ends you may desire.” — Andrew Carnegie
114. “Self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child’s nature.” — Charlotte Mason
115. “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” — B.B. King
116. “Every person has two educations, one which he receives from others, and one, more important, which he gives to himself.” — Edward Gibbon
117. “True education does not consist merely in the acquiring of a few facts of science, history, literature, or art, but in the development of character.” — David O. McKay
118. “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” — Malcolm X
What’s Your Favorite Quote About Poverty & Education?
In life, there’s no easy way out, and we must truly work hard to achieve our goals, no matter what they may be.
As long as we have quality education on our backs, then we are already a quarter through beating poverty. Pair that with sheer determination and courage, and you are already halfway through.
Which one of these quotes about poverty and education inspired you?
Let us know in the comments below!
Alan is the founder of Subconscious Servant. He has a passion for learning about topics such as spirituality and the metaphysical world. The thing he loves to explore most though is manifesting with the law of attraction ✨.