Ralph Merkle Quotes

Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.

A considerable share of the world's population still cannot afford comfortable housing, education and quality health care.

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.

Whatever people's backgrounds or values, a society where more and more people face a daily struggle to house, clothe and even feed themselves and their families cannot possibly be the answer.

Greater inequality in Europe has made people less happy.

Why should Americans go on with their lives as normal, worrying about calories and hair loss, while other people are worrying about where they are going to get their next piece of bread?

Life is a perspective and for me, if a human being has access to school, clean water, food, proper health care, that is the basis of human rights.

The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.

The poor get bored the same as the rest of us. Their happiness might be as important to them as their health.

It's very difficult when you have $1.50 per day to spend on food and drink, but for people who live this reality, that money also has to cover medical expenses and education, fuel and shelter - sometimes for an entire family.

Charities are now working to give people in poor countries access to the Internet. But shouldn't we spend that money on providing health clinics and safe water? Aren't these things more relevant? I have no intention of downplaying the importance of the Internet, but its impact has been exaggerated.

You know, if I listened to Michael Dukakis long enough, I would be convinced we're in an economic downturn and people are homeless and going without food and medical attention and that we've got to do something about the unemployed.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, 'What are we going to do?' but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that's nothing.

I have said democracy and freedom do not work too well if you are hungry, if you are starving.

It's hard for people who have never faced hunger or illiteracy to understand how crucial they are to the majority of mankind.

I see tens of millions of its citizens--a substantial part of its whole population--who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

Gentlemen, I speak to you for the miners' families... The little children are gathered around a bare table without anything to eat. They are not asking for a $100,000 yacht like yours, Mr.______..." (here, he would gesture with his cigar toward an operator), "...or for a Rolls-Royce limousine like yours, Mr. _____..." (staring at another operator). They are asking only for a slim crust of bread.

If your baby is going to die and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make.

I don't think happiness comes with money, but if you are hungry, you can't be as happy as if you aren't hungry.

We hear time and again what a prosperous, affluent country Britain is, the sixth richest in the world. But aren't we ashamed that people who need emergency food handouts are eating cold beans and stewed steak from the tin, or handing it back, because they can't even heat it up?

It’s scandalous when one thinks about the people who live in a world in which they need not be hungry, in which they need not die without medical care, in which they need not be illiterate, they need not feel hopeless and miserable so much of the time, and yet they are.

There’s no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars and then there’s people starving. There’s no way! There’s no way that these people should own planes and there people don’t have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants! I know you’re rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need ONE house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you know there’s somebody with no room?! It just don’t make sense to me. It don’t.

I can think of no honorable answer. Why must some of us deliberate between brands of toothpaste, while others deliberate between damp dirt and bone dust to quiet the fire of an empty stomach lining? There is nothing about the United States I can really explain to this child of another world.

I'm healthy as can be - not an ache or a pain. A lot of my prayer is thanking the Lord that I am healthy. I pray for long life and good health.

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.