Michael Dukakis Quotes

In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.

I want to make sure that nobody's dying on the streets when I'm president.

When you see in places like Africa and parts of Asia abject poverty, hungry children and malnutrition around you, and you look at yourself as being people who have well being and comforts, I think it takes a very insensitive, tough person not to feel they need to do something.

What I am interested in is to help this grand President of ours feed the hungry and clothe the naked and provide work for the idle of every race and creed

You’ve got to help people that are downtrodden and poor, and I just think that that’s part of our culture. You’ve got to help people that can’t help themselves.

For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the degradation of charity.

Tomorrow, I'm going to a soup kitchen in Mobile. I think that will symbolize the insensitivity of this administration to human needs.

Without an advocate for the poor, without a new state of mind in America, the country lies on the brink of anarchy.

Why do we have 47 million people without health care? Because America has become about 'me'. What's happened to 'we' as a people? I believe in that and that resonates to most people.

It's more important to try to do something for the crores of poor people of my country.

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.

Of the 22 industrialized nations of the world, we're dead last in per capita giving to poor people.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

We're asking those who have done well to do a little more for the people who need it.

Society might have been better off without them, but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged, and so we do it. But it doesn't help the society.

In my district, California 14, we have about 4,000 families who are on food stamps, but some of my colleagues have thousands and thousands more. Yet, they somehow feel like crusaders, like heroes, when they vote to cut food stamps.

We've got to take care of the poor.

The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don't have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments.

We are privileged. There are poor people out there. We must to do something to make them privileged.

I feel I should do everything I can to make a difference in Haiti. My main goal to help the people of Haiti is to give them homes, food, and jobs. It is heartbreaking to see little children sleeping on the ground in tents made of trash bags. I hope that we can put an end to this type of poverty not only in Haiti, but in the entire world.

And I believe that if we can care about whether or not our neighbor has a good job or access to affordable health care for their children, and we move to implement the policies that can improve these situations, we will unleash vast amounts of human potential and recapture the American spirit.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

The best way to perpetuate poverty is by spending on arms and military, and the best way to fight terrorism is by fighting the basic needs of humanity, because hunger and poverty perpetuate crime.

When people said Africa would change me, I didn't understand what they meant. To see the poverty in the townships, for instance, is overwhelming. I found it heart-wrenching to see young children walking barefoot and hungry in the dirt. I'm the kind of person who wants to change the world right here and now, so I got frustrated.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.