“Where are we going? We're going to try and fulfill Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, and if we Mexican Americans march to Washington, it is to tell this country that poverty is not a Negro problem. Poverty is a Mexican-American problem; poverty is an American-Indian problem; poverty is a Puerto Rican problem; poverty is an Appalachian problem.”

“By defining the problem as "hunger," the emergency food system is helping to direct our attention away from the more fundamental problem of poverty, and the even more basic problem of inequality.”

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”

“What he found impossible was to shut off his brain, to detach himself from the intriguing problems with which (he) was involved, or to leave alone the major problems of war and peace, race and poverty, man's inhumanity to man and the persistence of stupidity.”

“As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty and special privilege grow.”

“cross-national studies show that the U.S. poverty rate, which stands persistently above 12 percent, is not only the highest poverty rate of any advanced industrial nation, but is more than twice the average for that group.Pursuing the American Dream, 9, 276”