It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.
The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. 10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee__ chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief__ views: __e believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future._ What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department__ own rules presented battered women with a devil__ bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Quote Detail
The year the police called Sherrena, Wisconsin saw more than one victim per week murdered by a current or former romantic partner or relative. 10 After the numbers were released, Milwaukee__ chief of police appeared on the local news and puzzled over the fact that many victims had never contacted the police for help. A nightly news reporter summed up the chief__ views: __e believes that if police were contacted more often, that victims would have the tools to prevent fatal situations from occurring in the future._ What the chief failed to realize, or failed to reveal, was that his department__ own rules presented battered women with a devil__ bargain: keep quiet and face abuse or call the police and face eviction.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
In Kilanga, people knew nothing of things they might have had - a Frigidaire? a washer-dryer combination? Really, they'd sooner imagine a tree that could pull up its feet and go bake bread. It didn't occur to them to feel sorry for themselves.
Poverty is not only about income levels, but for lack of freedom that comes from physical insecurity
Many skills, as every successful entrepreneur knows, cannot be taught in school. They require doing. Sometimes a life of doing. And where money-making is concerned, nothing compresses the time frame needed to leap from my-shit-just-sits-there-until-it-rains poverty to which-of-my-toilets-shall-I-use affluence like an apprenticeship with someone who already has the angles all figured out.
I've never heard anyone come back from downtown Baltimore waxing poetic about the authenticity of poverty.