James Madison Quotes

For the good of Spain, I should like there to be rather fewer rich people and rather fewer poor.

The only way to have a better world and end poverty is by closing the gap between the top and the bottom.

Distribution of the wealth of the world is something for which no one sees a practical solution

In a good society, those in the middle and at the bottom ought to benefit significantly from economic growth. When the country prospers, everybody should prosper.

You are not going to lift everybody out of poverty through the kindness of wealthy people.

The measure of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, but whether, as Franklin Roosevelt said, we provide enough for those who have too little.

I say I don't need a tax cut. It will not do me any more good. I can't buy more, I can't eat more, I can't do more, and I want it distributed among the ordinary people who work every day.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

We don't need to bring down the rich folk to help the poor.

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

My mission is to eradicate poverty.

The New Deal was going to redistribute the national income according to ideals of social and economic justice.

We need to have the social investments by which to quote unquote distribute some of that wealth.

Here we have in New York Mr. Aster with an income of millions derived from real estate, … and we have along side of him a poor man receiving $1000 a year. What is the discrimination of the law in that case? It is altogether against the poor man—Everything that he consumes we tax, and yet we are afraid to tax the income of Mr. Astor. Is there any justice to it? Why, sir, the income tax is the only one that tends to equalize the burdens between rich and poor.

There's enough wealth in the world that no one should go without.

I don't subscribe to the view that people who are better off don't want to live in a more equal society.

I try to deal with the poverty gap - to do policies for all of us rather than only for the wealthy.

The Curse of poverty has no justification in our age...The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

Through periodic increases over the next three decades under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, the nation achieved one of the fundamental goals of a just society, which is that no one who works for a living should have to live in poverty.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.

Progress is more plausibly judged by the reduction of deprivation than by the further enrichment of the opulent

If you take from the most wealthy and give to the least wealthy, it's good. It tries to balance out.

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.

I would put primary emphasis on a good standard of living equitably distributed. It can't be equal, but one that eliminates the terrible cruelty of poverty.