James Arthur Quotes

You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.

Anyone who can walk to the welfare office can walk to work.

Welfare makes you dependent upon someone to take care of you.

If someone believes that living on benefits is a lifestyle choice, then we need to make them think again.

The welfare system was designed to do something different when it was started than what it does now. It was a safety net to help people get back to work: if they were sick, it would help them get back.

My father was unemployed and I was the eldest of seven children. We were very poor. And when you ask how did we support ourselves, the only funding that we had was unemployment payments.

Unemployment insurance is a pre-paid vacation for freeloaders.

My mum was a single mum on the dole.

I was once a welfare recipient and am very aware of the successes and failures of this critical safety net. There are those that would have us believe that those receiving TANF benefits are lazy, shiftless, freeloaders who are just sitting around thinking of another way to suckle from the government teat.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

Immediate relief for the unemployed was the first essential

Welfare is hated by those who administer it, mistrusted by those who pay for it and held in contempt by those who receive it.

We don’t want to turn this [social] safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people in their lives into dependency and complacency.

It has had a tremendous impact on my life, more than on the life of most Prize winners, because I was in an unusual situation. I was unemployed at the time. I was in good health, but I had reached the age of 66 and beginning to get social security, but I didn't have much of that. I had many years of unemployment before me.

We need people to go to work. If you're on food stamps, and you're able-bodied, we need you to go to work. If you're on disability insurance and you're not supposed to be, you're not truly disabled; we need you to go back to work.

I don't think you ought to walk into this country one day, and the first stop you make is the welfare office.

I receive food stamps but I have never been on welfare.

You get people who are on benefits who prefer to be on benefits by the seaside.

I disagree with those who say welfare is a waste of money. It's a good means to creating new jobs.

I've been on food stamps and welfare, did anybody help me out? No. No.

In 1978, '79, if you were unemployed, you didn't have an phone, you didn't have a big-screen TV, you didn't have air-conditioned house, and you weren't guaranteed to be eating three meals a day. You had welfare, you had unemployment, but you didn't have the kind of government support system/safety nets that exist today. So that's a difference. But today the economic circumstances really no different.

The hardest work in the world is being out of work.

I just remember all those days in the unemployment line, stressed out over when my next job was coming.

Why work when you can fill out a few forms and get paid for doing nothing?

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