J. C. Watts Quotes

Those born into poverty or on the margins of society require our extra support to realize their dreams.

All the poor white people, all the poor black people, all the Hispanics, they're in the same boat. They've got no economic opportunities.

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.

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.

I believe in the power of media. I really do. It's my soapbox. And I do have an agenda, because I'm enraged by the limitations forced on people - by poverty, oppression, hatred, fear - and I'm saddened by the kind of loss we all experienced due to the contributions that people cannot make because of their circumstances.

I had no need to apologize that the look-wider, search-more affirmative action that Princeton and Yale practiced had opened doors for me. That was its purpose: to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the starting line of a race many were unaware was even being run.

I filed a brief as a friend of the court in the U. of Michigan to keep affirmative action at the U. of Michigan, which I attended the law school. And I was one of the original sponsors of making the Martin Luther King birthday a federal holiday.

I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out.

Affirmative action has been generally cast in terms of race. I think women themselves are not as cognizant of the role affirmative action has played in opening the doors for women.

We should remember the poor.

Racial preferences are dead. All that is required now is to give them a decent and honorable burial.

Without affirmative action I could never have attended Yale University. Without affirmative action Barack Obama would never have gotten into Colombia and Harvard Law school

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.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others”, and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through the those gates.

Wealthy women have rights in every country. And poor women don't.

Economic inequality is not about food stamps and homeless shelters. It is about being a devotee of social justice and equality.

We don't know: some little black boy or girl growing up in the inner city might grow up and cure cancer for all of us - if we let them do it.

There are so many people and organisations that work quietly and diligently for the poor and the disadvantaged. We should also work with unity and purpose to ensure that the benefits of government policies reach all sections of society.

If I could help every ghetto, I would.

I do not think education is necessary to give justice to the poor.

It doesn't matter what color you are. Poverty is poverty. Inmates come from all walks of life. We have to make sure we look out for these people and give them a chance.

Well, we in America are about to break up with oil. Why not break up with poverty and discrimination too?

Pity would be no more, If we did not make somebody poor. Mercy no more could be, If all were happy as we.

There's a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can't make any bread helping the poor.