Mother Teresa Quotes

My foundation was created so I can find a way to improve the living conditions of my people in the African continent, not just in Congo.

Charity plays an important role in upholding the values and advancing the work of the United Nations.

The best reason to diminish social programs is not to put more money in people's pockets but to put more responsibility in people's pockets.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity's golden ladder.

The best way to help Africans today is to help them to stand on their own feet. And the best way to do that is by helping create jobs.

Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. ... Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.

Most poor people I know are proud and really want not a handout but a hand up. They do have an inherent pride and dignity, and we should treat them as those who have fallen on bad days.

Compassion, however, should mean providing a mechanism to escape poverty rather than simply maintaining people in an impoverished state by supplying handouts. By doing this we give them an opportunity to elevate their personal situations, which eventually decreases our need to take care of them and empowers them to be able to exercise compassion toward others.

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.

My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I've given.

Social service has always been my priority, and I want to help the poor.

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.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

We must protect our limited resources for those who are truly in need and who are doing all they can to be self-sufficient.

All people believe in America, jobs, creating energy here, not being dependent on foreign energy sources.

I've always been such a fan of Habitat for Humanity and the work that they do.

Of course we have compassion. We just don't believe the safety net should be used as a hammock.

In the drastic move from the serfdom to freedom, it is probably better for ex-slaves to be soldiers, and thus gradually learn to support themselves than to be thrown on the cold charities of the world without sympathy or assistance.

Jobs not welfare.

…it would be much better to enable every man to earn his own living, instead of being driven to the awful necessity of stealing and then dying for it.

In the past, the public assistance programs have been too much concerned with the mere dispatching of monthly checks. … it is high time that some concerted effort be made to get people off the rolls who can sustain themselves.

The humanitarian aid system is built on a concept that when disaster strikes, outside agencies provide a temporary helping hand until people can take back control of their own lives. But across the world, we see millions of people caught in semi-permanent crises. As each year goes by, they are less and less likely to break free.

I want to make money for third-world-country kids, and I need to be smart about how to do it.

Well-designed subsidies help the poor make the best of whatever opportunities they have; poorly designed ones either do very little or actually make things worse for them.

The original purpose of the welfare state was to lift people into self-sufficiency, not to create a permanent underclass dependent on taxpayers.