John Locke Quotes

Our America is an America where human needs come before human greed.

None of us can think we are exempt from concerns for the poor and for social justice.

It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers.

The Hebrew word “tzedakah” … is translated as “charity” but … comes from the same root as the word for “justice”.

If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.

When we see people that are impoverished and people who are dealt an unfair hand, then if we have the power to help them, we should try to do that.

Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral.

According to our Christian ethics, we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor. It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax.

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

It seems to me morally a decent society will try to take some of the increased benefit and use that to alleviate the pain of the few who are bearing the cost that made it possible.

Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

Almsgiving tends to perpetuate poverty; and does away with it once and for all. Almsgiving leaves a man just where he was before. Aid restores him to society as an individual worthy of all respect and not as a man with a grievance. Almsgiving is the generosity of the rich; social aid levels up social inequalities.

We should remember the poor.

Fill the people's bellies and open their hearts.

Those who are more influential because they have greater share of goods and common services should feel responsible for the weaker and be ready to share with them all they possess

It is right to be forward in the defense of the poor; no system that is not just as between rich and poor can hope to survive.

We are the wealthiest country in the world. There is no excuse not to help poor people….When was the last time you saw poverty mentioned on television.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

I care for the poor. I am the one willing to work with the poor and have a safety net we can all depend on and make people understand that nothing in life is free. You have to get back to society.

What is superfluous to your poor estate, distribute. This is distributive charity: a virtue so sacred that crimes against it are the forerunner of inevitable doom.

Not to share one’s goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life. It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs.

We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.

We hold the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance.

Not to share our own wealth with the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their means of life; we do not possess our own wealth, but theirs.