G.T. Bynum Quotes

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

[The Americans] believe in the idea that a child shouldn't be consigned to poverty just because of circumstances of their birth.

As a senior at Princeton, I felt like the whole world was open to me. In our country, that's not a given. We aspire to be a place of equal opportunity, and yet where you're born determines your prospects.

It might be that my poverty is my fault—the result of my ineptitude or my laziness. However, is there any way that the poverty that my child is condemned to is his fault? He certainly does not have the same opportunity as my child would if I were rich. But where then is our equality of opportunity?

Economic inequality is not about food stamps and homeless shelters. It is about being a devotee of social justice and equality.

We can and will make Chicago a place where your ZIP code doesn't determine your destiny.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Parents with meager means have the same aspirations for their children as other parents. Children from poor families have the same needs as other children.

Economic issues are a subset of social justice. Social justice is unimaginable without economic justice. Isn't that obvious?

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

I started out young and idealistic, and it was all about social justice and fair distribution of resources. I didn't understand why everybody couldn't be equally prosperous.

I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect - and help, if necessary - than many people who are superficially more successful.

The biggest single challenge to America and our future is income inequality. We've got to fix it.

It isn't the rich people's fault that poor people are poor. Poor people who get an education and work hard in this country will stop being poor. That should be the goal for all poor people everywhere.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

If you are poor today, you will always be poor. Only the rich now acquire riches.

You can have class in the ghetto and trash in the White House.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty spread and special privilege grow.

The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can’t. But I don’t believe that the federal government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, when there is a moral factor involved.

The Declaration of Independence promised citizens equal access to economic opportunity. This was the powerful principle for which men were willing to fight the American Revolution, but it was never codified in law. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they assumed that the country's vast resources would ensure equality of opportunity.