That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.

Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than to submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. It is a strange part of the other America that one finds in the intellectual slums.

Clothes make the poor invisible. America has the best-dressed poverty the world has ever known.

It takes a certain level of aspiration before one can take advantage of opportunities that are clearly offered.

If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery, in impoverishment.

If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery.