52 Quotes Lacking Clarity

In the realm of communication, clarity is often celebrated as a virtue. We gravitate towards quotes that enlighten, inspire, and guide us with precision. However, in the pursuit of understanding, there lies an intriguing charm in statements shrouded in ambiguity. These are the musings that leave room for introspection, interpretation, and even a touch of confusion. Welcome to a curated collection of the top 52 quotes that mystify rather than clarify, offering a delightful invitation to lose oneself in the labyrinth of words. In exploring these quotes, you might just find that the journey through ambiguity holds its own unique and thought-provoking allure.

1. “Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.” - Lucy Maud Montgomery

2. “E po, mirupafshim! Po me mbyt trishtimi, nga merzia. Seç kam nje brenge ne shpirt, Makar Aleksejeviç. As vete s'e di arsyen. E tille dite paska qene. Mirupafshim!” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

3. “Naten s'kisha gjume, me mbyste pendimi, kot thone qe pendimi te lehteson.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

4. “Duhet te qendrojne larg njeri-tjetri si fatkeqet ashtu dhe te varferit, keshtu nuk do te rendoheshin nga njeri-tjetri. Ju shkaktova aq shume fatkeqesi, qe s'i kishit patur kurre me pare ne jeten modeste te vetmitarit. Kjo me brengos, ma derrmon shpirtin.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

5. “Po ç'pune ke ti, mor zoteri, me çizmet e mia te shqyera dhe me berrylat e mi te grisur?” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

6. “It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need” - Thomas Aquinas

7. “Hebrew word for "charity" tzedakah, simply means "justice" and as this suggests, for Jews, giving to the poor is no optional extra but an essential part of living a just life.” - Peter Singer

8. “Lere pastaj qe ka dhe jo pak pasunare qe s'i pelqen te degjojne ankimet me ze te larte te varfanjakeve. Se, sigurisht, i shqetesojne, i bezdisin me ankesat pa fund. Po, moj shpirt, varferia kurdohere e bezdisshme eshte. Ja ç'eshte, Varenjka. Renkimet e te uriturve, klithmat e zemerplasurve u prishin gjumin ca zoterinjve.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

9. “Am I right in suggesting that ordinary life is a mean between these extremes, that the noble man devotes his material wealth to lofty ends, the advancement of science, or art, or some such true ideal; and that the base man does the opposite by concentrating all his abilities on the amassing of wealth?'Exactly; that is the real distinction between the artist and the bourgeois, or, if you prefer it, between the gentleman and the cad. Money, and the things money can buy, have no value, for there is no question of creation, but only of exchange. Houses, lands, gold, jewels, even existing works of art, may be tossed about from one hand to another; they are so, constantly. But neither you nor I can write a sonnet; and what we have, our appreciation of art, we did not buy. We inherited the germ of it, and we developed it by the sweat of our brows. The possession of money helped us, but only by giving us time and opportunity and the means of travel. Anyhow, the principle is clear; one must sacrifice the lower to the higher, and, as the Greeks did with their oxen, one must fatten and bedeck the lower, so that it may be the worthier offering.” - Aleister Crowley

10. “Francis Crozier believes in nothing. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It has no plan, no point, no hidden mysteries that make up for the oh-so-obvious miseries and banalities. Nothing he has learned in the past six months has persuaded him otherwise.Has it?” - Dan Simmons

11. “History is written by the rich, and so the poor get blamed for everything.” - Jeffrey Sachs

12. “[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all.” - Michael Palin

13. “Even today we don't pay serious attention to the issue of poverty, because the powerful remain relatively untouched by it. Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor.” - Muhammad Yunus

14. “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.” - Stephen Colbert

15. “Our people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won't all be poor.” - John Steinbeck

16. “Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.” - Muhammad Yunus

17. “And, conversely, she went on to herself, sneering at the Grand Duke's palace, poverty is wasted on the poor, who never know how to make the best of things, are only the rich without money, are just as useless at looking after themselves, can't handle their cash just like the rich can't, always squandering it on bright, pretty, useless things in just the same way.” - Angela Carter

18. “I hadn't found out yet that mankind consists of two very different races, the rich and the poor. It took me ... and plenty of other people . . . twenty years and the war to learn to stick to my class and ask the price of things before touching them, let alone setting my heart on them.” - Louis-Ferdinand Celine

19. “The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.” - George Orwell

20. “It is the privilege of the richTo waste the time of the poorTo water with tears in secretA tree that grows in secretThat bears fruit in secretThat ripened falls to the ground in secretAnd manures the parent treeOh the wicked tree of hatred and the secretThe sap rising and the tears falling.” - Stevie Smith

21. “Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.” - Glen Cook

22. “The few own the many because they possess the means of livelihood of all ... The country is governed for the richest, for the corporations, the bankers, the land speculators, and for the exploiters of labor. The majority of mankind are working people. So long as their fair demands - the ownership and control of their livelihoods - are set at naught, we can have neither men's rights nor women's rights. The majority of mankind is ground down by industrial oppression in order that the small remnant may live in ease.” - Helen Keller

23. “Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters.” - Criss Jami

24. “As they were walking, a beggar came up, holding his hand out and crying, "Baksheesh! Baksheesh!"Mike kept on going but Mitchell stopped. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out twenty paise and placed it in the beggar's dirty hand.Mike said, "I used to give to beggars when I first came here. But then I realized, it's hopeless. It never stops.""Jesus said you should give to whoever asks you," Mitchell said."Yeah, well," Mike said, "obviously Jesus was never in Calcutta.” - Jeffrey Eugenides

25. “Thank God (my wife) and I were both born poorso the concept of fidelity was allowed to take root in us.” - Allan Wolf

26. “(Regarding check-cashing places):It's hitting me how poor this really is: I'm standing in a long line to pay someone to give me my pay. So, technically, they get paid before I do, and it's my damn check.” - Angela Nissel

27. “By Rachel Corrie, aged 10 — 1990I’m here for other children.I’m here because I care.I’m here because children everywhere are suffering and because forty thousand people die each day from hunger.I’m here because those people are mostly children.We have got to understand that the poor are all around us and we are ignoring them.We have got to understand that these deaths are preventable.We have got to understand that people in third world countries think and care and smile and cry just like us.We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.We have got to understand that they are us. We are them.My dream is to stop hunger by the year 2000.My dream is to give the poor a chance.My dream is to save the 40,000 people who die each day.My dream can and will come true if we all look into the future and see the light that shines there.If we ignore hunger, that light will go out.If we all help and work together, it will grow and burn free with the potential of tomorrow.” - Rachel Corrie

28. “We are all born and someday we’ll all die. Most likely to some degree alone.What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn’t be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn’t be a metaphor, it would be a reality.And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.I can’t cool boiling waters in Russia. I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly.I can wash dishes.” - Rachel Corrie

29. “The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.” - George Orwell

30. “I felt like a kid standing in the world's greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.” - Ernest Cline

31. “My God, rich people have the time to praise You if they want to, but the poor people are so busy, accept their work as praise because, my God, they don’t have time for everything.” - Garrison Keillor

32. “When YOU stop believing one person in the world cannot make a difference; differences in the world will be made.” - Kellie Elmore

33. “Nina sniffed, shifting her shoulders to look at the sky through the branches. "She's a sweet girl, but poor."Ire pricked through me, and the last of his charisma shredded. "Being poor is not an indication of potential or worth. It's a lack of resources.” - Kim Harrison

34. “You'd be surprised how difficult it is to ask alms of a stranger when you've never done it before, what a psychological barrier separates the honest man from the panhandler. ("Dusk To Dawn")” - Cornell Woolrich

35. “You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists” - G.K. Chesterton

36. “Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins aes alienum, another's brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other's brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.” - Henry David Thoreau

37. “Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau

38. “Here is the problem: Poor Americans consume too little healthcare, especially preventive healthcare. Other Americans—often rich Americans—consume too much healthcare, often unwisely, and sometimes to their detriment. The American healthcare system combines famine with gluttony.” - Otis Webb Brawley

39. “I am very poor - for a know nothing, understand nothing. It is not a calamitous condition until it is realized.” - Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

40. “No one described him better than he did when someone accused him of being rich. “No, not rich,” he said. “I am a poor man with money, which is not the same thing.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

41. “The most impoverished peasant can be delighted by the opening of the first spring flower, and the most wealthy aristocrat can curse the day he was born because of some petty offense to his sensibilities. She is a very wise woman. To achieve serenity we have to view life not as it is measured by the world around us but as we ourselves measure it. We must accept that the scales are not at all equal.” - Emma Wildes

42. “His lines had been honed over centuries, passed down through generations, for poor people needed certain lines; the script was always the same, and they had no option but to beg for mercy.” - kiran desai

43. “God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all—no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals nor how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.” - Ronald J. Sider

44. “God thundered again and again through the prophets that worship in the context of mistreatment of the poor and disadvantaged is an outrage.” - Ronald J. Sider

45. “How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are? I've heard rumors; the world is starving, but we're well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much? I've heard the rumors about hate too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don't, that's sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!” - Ray Bradbury

46. “The patience and forbearance of the poor are among the strongest bulwarks of the rich.” - C.L.R. James

47. “The intelligent poor individual was a much finer observer than the intelligent rich one. The poor individual looks around him at every step, listens suspiciously to every word he hears from the people he meets; thus, every step he takes presents a problem, a task, for his thoughts and feelings. He is alert and sensitive, he is experienced, his soul has been burned...” - Knut Hamsun

48. “Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life.” - Piero Gheddo

49. “The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.” - Saint Basil

50. “Cheerful poor is rich with a smile, sulky rich is poor with a bullion of gold.” - Mehmet Murat ildan

51. “Our God is known for His compassion for the needy; let us be known for it as well.” - Dillon Burroughs

52. “Many overlook the fact that Jesus was homeless. He did not only teach the poor; He lived among them.” - Dillon Burroughs