Meanings
- Poverty for some is inevitable.
“The poor we will always have with us.” / And some will come to church.
2013, Jason Byassee, Discerning the Body: Searching for Jesus in the World2 more examples
These beggars on horseback — the poor we will always have with us as long as we give such alms - are forever at the elbows of the secretaries, representatives, senators. The people who pay are at work in their fields, out of sight, scattered over thousands of miles.
1894, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Wealth Against Commonwealth, page 398When the poor are taken by definition to be the lowest 10th or the lowest 5th, or the lowest 3rd, we will, of course, arrive at the not very startling conclusion, “the poor we will always have with us.”
1973, Neil W. Chamberlain, Contemporary Economic Issues, page 54
Cite this entry
the poor we will always have with us. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/the%20poor%20we%20will%20always%20have%20with%20us
“the poor we will always have with us.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/the%20poor%20we%20will%20always%20have%20with%20us. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “the poor we will always have with us,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/the%20poor%20we%20will%20always%20have%20with%20us.
Source: the poor we will always have with us on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.