73 Quotes That Miss The Mark

In a world overflowing with words of wisdom, not every quote hits the intended target. Some are humorous misfires, others are well-intended but ultimately perplexing, and a few simply miss the mark in a way that's strangely endearing. Welcome to our exploration of sayings that didn't quite make it to the realm of inspiring or profound. Whether they're lost in translation, packed with improbable advice, or just comically off-base, these 73 memorable quotes prove that even the best intentions can sometimes go hilariously astray. Dive in and enjoy the charm of these imperfect pearls of "wisdom."

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. “Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.” - George Bernard Shaw

3. “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.[Inaugural Address, January 20 1961]” - John F. Kennedy

4. “Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.” - Audre Lorde

5. “The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you don't listen to it, you will never know what justice is.” - Howard Zinn

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

7. “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

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

9. “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

10. “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

11. “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

12. “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” - Warren Buffett

13. “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

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

15. “Compromise is low class. I don't have anything against the poor, but being low class is the root of all evil” - Novala Takemoto

16. “[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

17. “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

18. “When we want to help the poor, we usually offer them charity. Most often we use charity to avoid recognizing the problem and finding the solution for it. Charity becomes a way to shrug off our responsibility. But charity is no solution to poverty. Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor. Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about the lives of the poor. Charity appeases our consciences.” - Muhammad Yunus

19. “The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability.” - Muhammad Yunus

20. “The poor are always prophetic. As true prophets always point out, they reveal God's design. That is why we should take time to listen to them. And that means staying near them, because they speak quietly and infrequently; they are afraid to speak out, they lack confidence in themselves because they have been broken and oppressed. But if we listen to them, they will bring us back to the essential.” - Jean Vanier

21. “One of the Great Rules of Economics According to John GreenIf you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich.” - John Green

22. “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

23. “America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.” - Kurt Vonnegut

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

25. “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

26. “Back in Russia we were dirt-poor. Here in the West we are still poor but have risen above the dirt to tower alongside stalks of grass!” - Vera Nazarian

27. “It's easy to be humble when your life's prosper.Nothing could be denigrated when life's so poor.” - Toba Beta

28. “I would suggest that a feminism which does not also seek to alter the exploitation of poorer women is not feminism at all, but is simply a varient for of upper-class politics & self-privileging.” - Jack D. Forbes

29. “Then she added in a sort of childish delight: 'We'll be poor, won't we? Like people in books. And I'll be an orphan and utterly free. Free and poor! What fun!' She stopped and raised her lips to him in a delighted kiss.'It's impossible to be both together,' said John grimly. 'People have found that out. And I should choose to be free as preferable of the two...” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

30. “It's so funny you judge me arrogant after I succeeded.You didn't help me at all when I was so poor and needy.” - Toba Beta

31. “This is the basis for the most important critique of microfinance. The poor are not entrepreneurs. The idea that more than a few will turn tiny loans into a viable business is simply unrealistic.” - Ian Smillie

32. “Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldn't harm them to starve a little. The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the children's bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldn't cry so much for food. The old starved silently. ("The North")” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

36. “Mother Teresa would seek no other pulpit than the hovels of the poor, and no other sermon than her works of love, performed for the unloved, in God's name.” - Joseph Langford

37. “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

38. “The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” - Dorothy Day

39. “Torch strode over and stared at the fiver"What's this?""Some change for you. Buy your flunkies some decent clothes." I dipped my fingers into the jar and smeared think fragrant paste on my face. Torch frowned, mirroring the expression on my aunt's face."Change?"Oh, for crying out loud. "It's money. We don't use coins as currency now, we use paper money." He stared at me. "I'm insulting you! I'm saying your poor, like a beggar, because your undead are in rags. I'm offering to clothe your servants for you, because you can't provide for them. Come on, how thick do you have to be?"He jerked his hand up. A jet of flame erupted from his fingers, sliding against the ward. I jerked back from the windows on instinct. The fire died. I leaned forward. "Do you understand now?" More fire. "What's the matter? Was that not enough money?” - Ilona Andrews

40. “You say you care about the poor? Tell me their names.” - Craig & Nayhouy Greenfield

41. “So I heard the boom of my father's rifle when he shot my best friend. A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.” - Sherman Alexie

42. “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

43. “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

44. “Stealing it, in a sick kind of sense, was like earning it.” - Markus Zusak

45. “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

46. “I have always found that it is far more convenient to be rich rather than to be poor.” - Amanda Quick

47. “One thing's sure and nothing surer. The rich get richer and the poor get- children” - Ron Rash

48. “How reprehensible it is when those blessed with commodities insist on ignoring the poor. Better to torment them, force them into indentured servitude, inflict compulsion and blows—this at least produces a connection, fury and a pounding heart, and these too constitute a form of relationship. But to cower in elegant homes behind golden garden gates, fearful lest the breath of warm humankind touch you, unable to indulge in extravagances for fear they might be glimpsed by the embittered oppressed, to oppress and yet lack the courage to show yourself as an oppressor, even to fear the ones you are oppressing, feeling ill at ease in your own wealth and begrudging others their ease, to resort to disagreeable weapons that require neither true audacity nor manly courage, to have money, but only money, without splendor: That’s what things look like in our cities at present” - Robert Walser

49. “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

50. “The rich can afford to be progressive. Poor people have reason to be afraid of the future.” - Garrison Keillor

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

52. “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

53. “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

54. “His August Majesty chided the bureaucrats for failing to understand a simple principle: the principle of the second bag. Because the people never revolt just because they have to carry a heavy load, or because of exploitation. They don't know life without exploitation, they don't even know that such a life exists. How can they desire what they cannot imagine? The people will rvolt only when, in a single movement, someone tries to throw a second burden, a second heavy bag, onto their backs. The peasant will fall face down into the mud - and then spring up and grab an ax. He'll grab an ax, my gracious sir, not because he simply can't sustain this new burden - he could carry it - he will rise because he feels that, in throwing the second burden onto his back suddenly and stealthily, you have tried to cheat him, you have treated him like an unthinking animal, you have trampled what remains of his already strangled dignity, taken him for an idiot who doesn't see, feel, or understand. A man doesn't seize an ax in defense of his wallet, but in defense of his dignity, and that, dear sir, is why His Majesty scolded the clerks. For their own convenience and vanity, instead of adding the burden bit by bit, in little bags, they tried to heave a whole big sack on at once.” - Ryszard Kapuściński

55. “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

56. “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

57. “I liked this rich lifestyle, but I loved the poor lifestyle better. The less money people had, the less greedy they seemed to be. The people who lived around our flocks seemed to always love everyone around them. Even though they aren’t always happy and can’t always afford the bills, they are still glad to be alive.” - Shannon A Thompson

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

59. “A society which has poor people on its streets is a failed society!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

60. “Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.” - Charles Bukowski

61. “We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won” - Ronald Reagan

62. “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

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

64. “Kuwa tajiri si kazi rahisi. Ukipata milioni ya kwanza utataka nyingine kulinda hiyo ya kwanza. Ukipata ya pili utataka mbili zingine kulinda hizo mbili za kwanza, n.k. Si kazi rahisi. Si kama unavyofikiria. Utajiri haujanipa furaha. Umenipa uhuru. Ndugu zangu ni maskini wa kutupwa. Ningependa kuishi kama maskini mwenye pesa nyingi.” - Enock Maregesi

65. “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

66. “It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have.” - Flannery O'Connor

67. “Don't insult me today just because I'm poor, you don't know what my future holds!” - William Kamkwamba

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

69. “If you have two shirts in your closet, one belongs to you and the other to the man with no shirt.” - St. Ambrose

70. “Once the demands of necessity and propriety have been met, the rest that one owns belongs to the poor.” - Pope Leo XIII

71. “Frequently give up some of your property by giving it with a generous heart to the poor ... It is true that God will repay us not only in the next world but even in this.” - St. Francis de Sales

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

73. “I thought of Sammy Glick rocking in his cradle of hate, malnutrition, prejudice, suspicions, amorality, the anarchy of the poor; I thought of him as a mangy puppy in a dog-eat-dog world. I was modulating my hate for Sammy Glick from the personal to the societal. I no longer even hated Rivington Street but the idea of Rivington Street, all Rivington Streets of all nationalities allowed to pile up in cities like gigantic dung heaps smelling up the world, ambitions growing out of filth and crawling away like worms. I saw Sammy Glick on a battlefield where every soldier was his own cause, his own army and his own flag, and I realized that I had singled him out not because he had been born into the world anymore selfish, ruthless and cruel than anybody else, even though he had become all three, but because in the midst of a war that was selfish, ruthless and cruel Sammy was proving himself the fittest and the fiercest and the fastest.” - Budd Schulberg