Maya Soetoro-Ng Quotes

Poverty-fighting programs are not handouts - they are investments.

What we need is a safety net that lifts people out of poverty - that helps them earn a good paycheck so they can support themselves.

Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.

Even the best community organizations and faith-based initiatives and the extraordinary charity of Americans across the country can't carry the brunt of eliminating poverty.

I lived through a golden period where society felt that it was good to help people who didn't have a great deal of money fulfil their potential.

The worst thing we could do is impose time limits and then expect people to sink or swim once they move off welfare.

I believe in a safety net. I believe one of the responsibilities of the Federal Government is a safety net.

American poverty is darkened by lonliness: poverty in so many poor countries …. Is brightened only by community. Helping people gain other people to lean on—not just offering cheaper health care and food stamps, tax cuts and charter schools—seems essential to making the American dream work …

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.

My government is giving residential, health facilities to poor as poverty can be removed only by empowering them.

The matter of social security and these grants is to help to address the levels of poverty in the country.

Americans sometimes ask what the government does and where their tax money goes. Among other things, it pays for all kinds of invisible but essential safety nets and life belts and guardrails that are useless right up until the day they are priceless.

To Republicans, I humbly suggest that we make it possible for Democrats to give up their quest for redistribution of income and wealth by our acceptance of an appropriate role for government in financing those public goods and services necessary to secure a social safety net below which no American would be allowed to fall.

Too many Mainers are dependent on government handouts. Government dependency has not - and never will - create prosperity.

We've got to take care of the poor.

We need to make sure our government programs encourage work, not dependence.

With the right support, a child growing up in a dysfunctional household, who was destined for a lifetime on benefits could be put on an entirely different track - one which sees them move into fulfilling and sustainable work. In doing so, they will pull themselves out of poverty.

We believe in government involvement that leads to independence: good schools, quality roads and the best health care.

We often have an exaggerated sense of what nonprofits and governments are doing to help the poor, but the really inspiring thing is how much the poor are doing to help themselves.

In social policy, when we provide a safety net, it should be designed to help people take more entrepreneurial risks, not to turn them into dependents. This doesn't mean that we should be callous to the underprivileged.

An important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money.

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.

Society’s willingness to provide for the poor among them increases when the standard of living is advancing.

Reduction of dependency is the greatest unmet need in social policy today.