"The poor you have with you always" John 12:8.

from Stephen L. Carter's New England White, Vintage paperback edition, page 616:

"Certainly in the heated presidential campaign shaping around her nobody gave any serious consideration  to what should be done about race and poverty-- not when there were important issues to confront. There were always important issues to confront. Race and poverty could come later. Maybe that was why Jesus had said the poor we would have with us always: He knew where they would rank, even two millennia later, in the list of political priorities. What Mona had said so long ago, quoting some writer, resonated more and more strongly with Julia as the weeks flew past: white people were far more interested in the equality of their wives and daughters that the equality of their servants."