Kim Jong Il Quotes

Bend everything toward improving the standard of living of the people.

There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.

Increased means and increased leisure are the two civilizers of man.

At their core, Americans all want the same basic things: a quality education for their children, a good job so they can provide for their families, healthcare and affordable prescription drugs, security during retirement, a strongly equipped military and national security.

We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.

The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.

By 1979, Chinese people were poorer, on average, than North Koreans. I mean, your average per-capita income in China that year was one third of sub-Saharan Africa's.

In my fifty years of experience and memory, I have seen the most amazing increase in the standard of living of a people ever achieved anywhere in the world. This is why I am so sure that our system of free competition and industrial development is sound and must be preserved.

Above and beyond the question of how to grow the economy there is a legitimate concern about how to grow the quality of our lives.

India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people's century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble.

I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years' time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years' time we shall be ahead of the United States.

At the end of the day, is Singapore society better or worse off? That's the test.

Growth is not an objective in itself; we should be concerned with standards of living.

The normal metric of measuring progress has actually been the rate of growth, OK? It's not a wrong metric, but it's not a full metric.

As we progress as a species, we will unlock new means for enhancing our lives at every turn - and our conceptions of wealth and poverty will evolve in tandem.

We are going to seek to improve the lives of our people on an ongoing basis, and since 1994, we have done precisely that.

Where America has got to move is not growth for the sake of growth, but it's got to move to a society that provides a high quality of life for all of our people. In other words, if people have health care as a right, as do the people of every other major country, then there's less worry about growth. If people have educational opportunity and their kids can go to college and they have child care, then there's less worry about growth for the sake of growth.

Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually their lot and what would be desirable, while in the poor countries large masses of people seem to be satisfied by merely surviving.

I have always believed that the ultimate purpose of economic policies and development policy is to meet the basic needs of our people. And for that, we need a fast-expanding economy.

America has everything most countries envy. A Constitution which is the treasure of mankind, a strong military, natural resources of every kind. Above all, as Tocqueville said, a good people, which is what makes us great.

It's a proven fact that when you raise the status of girls and women in a country, that country does much better economically.

No circumstance would prevent over-population so effectually as a general raising of the customary standard of comfort among the poorer classes. If they had accustomed themselves to a more comfortable style of living, they would use every effort not again to sink below it.

Few nations do more than the United States to assist their least fortunate citizens-to make certain that no child, no elderly or handicapped citizen, no family in any circumstances in any State, is left without the essential needs for a decent and healthy existence. In too few nations, I might add, are the people aware of the progressive strides this country has taken in demonstrating the humanitarian side of freedom. Our record is a proud one-and it sharply refutes those who accuse us of thinking only in the materialistic terms of cash registers and calculating machines.

We don't measure whether an economy is developing. We just measure whether companies are selling more, whether inventories are up or down, not whether the health, safety and economic well-being of people are being advanced.

Where do people earn the Per Capita Income? More than one poor starving soul would like to know. In our countries, numbers live better than people. How many people prosper in times of prosperity? How many people find their lives developed by development?