James Madison Quotes

A New Dealer regrets poverty and deplores the fact that it is necessary for society to slough off its misfits as an individual sheds his impurities and his diseases. But New Dealers believe that human want and human distress should be prevented or at least ameliorated.

Haiti's economy cannot be built by and benefit just a privileged few. It must be built by and benefit all Haitians.

I had watched for many years and seen how a few rich families held much of Argentina's wealth and power in their hands. So Peron and the government brought in an eight hour working day, sickness pay and fair wages to give poor workers a fair go .

The best social programs we've had in this country are those that have united the middle class and the poor.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well.

The only way to have a better world and end poverty is by closing the gap between the top and the bottom.

I'm a capitalist. I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works if you have safety nets to deal with people who are naturally left behind and brutalized by it.

Pope Francis emphatically does not buy the argument that poverty can be alleviated by the 'trickle down' effects of wealth creation. He is deaf to arguments that the global economy has brought a billion people out of poverty. He is convinced, in short, that the best and only way to expel poverty is fairer distribution of the world's goods.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

My mission is to eradicate poverty.

There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty.

We cannot run a democracy without a strong middle class.

Government has a role as well in what is referred to as redistributive justice.

Reducing poverty is in our own interest.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Unequal wealth distribution is a risk factor for inequality that must be attacked by policies.

The middle class is not a fact of nature. It is partly the product of social engineering by the government.

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.

It's not class warfare to talk about fairness.

Huge inequality gaps in a democratic society will tend to erode the respect for and security of doctrines of private property. The large majority must either own property or have reasonable prospects of attaining property if they are to support and maintain private property laws and traditions.

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

We will not rest until this war [on poverty] is won.

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.