Even if you were a softy, you took the mattock, you dug,
you were willing to work. In this part he most shows himself a man,
whoever tolerates making himself equal to another,
rich to poor. For this man will bear a change of fortune
with self-control. You have given a sufficient proof of your character.
I wish only that you remain as you are.
--
GorgiasMenander
Ye are born, all of you, to a royal birthright. Scorn not the poor, thou wealthy — his toil is nobler than thy luxury. Fret not at the rich, thou poor — his beneficence is comelier than thy murmuring. Join hands, both of you, rich and poor together, as ye toil in the brotherhood of God's great harvest-field — heirs of a double heritage — thou poor, of thy kingly labor — thou rich, of thy queenly charity — and let heaven bear witness to the bridal.
William Morley Punshon
The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. But after the division of labour has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man's own labour can supply him. The far greater part of them he must derive from the labour of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labour which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.
Adam Smith
What is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive — and has never put in an honest day's work in its life.
Elaine Dundy
In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all men are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers' keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King
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