“I don’t know what it’s like to be poor. I am privileged.

And yet so many of us pretend we know. Can’t they just go get a job? Can’t they just work harder? Can’t they just go get a degree? Can’t they just save more? Spend less? These questions are ridiculous. They come from people who have never known any struggles. They come from people who never held multiple jobs just to put food on the table. These questions are from people who assume hard work is the answer to all problems. These questions are from people who were not born into poverty.”

Explore more quotes:


About the author

This page was created by our editorial team. Each page is manually curated, researched, collected, and issued by our staff writers. Quotes contained on this page have been double checked for their citations, their accuracy and the impact it will have on our readers.

Kelly Peacock is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. Kelly has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. Kelly assists on a wide variety of quote inputting and social media functions for Quote Catalog. Visit her personal website here.

Kendra Syrdal is a writer, editor, partner, and senior publisher for The Thought & Expression Company. Over the last few years she has been personally responsible for writing, editing, and producing over 30+ million pageviews on Thought Catalog.