Walter E. Williams Quotes

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

I understand that people might be poor if they don't have any work, but I don't accept that someone is poor if they've worked really hard.

To help people emerge from the poverty, you have to understand, what are the structural causes of it? And the structural causes are partially cultural.

I began to realize that poverty was really more of a choice than anything else and that I could change that. And it just really depended on how hard I wanted to work.

The ones that actually affect people who don't have enough money to change them - which is almost everybody. But that has nothing to do with the president.

The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in any of the other advanced industrial countries.

It says anybody can make it, because we're all on a level playing field. But we're not on a level playing field. That 's precisely the point, and that's what the rich don't want to look at. They don't want to recognize that they're not producing wealth at all. They're hoarding wealth. That's different.

by and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them

Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty.

70% of children born into poverty will never make it to the middle class. The uncomfortable truth is that there are now a number of other countries with as much or more opportunity than ours. In fact, more people in Canada go on to surpass the income of their parents than in the United States.

If the global economy is unresponsive to people who feel left behind, if inequality continues to grow, then we could end up seeing more and more of these divisions arise throughout advanced economies around the world.

There are more differences between poor people than between middle-class people.

I believe poor people are good people, except the ones that are mean . . .

The only people who really worry about money are the very poor and the very rich.

You've got first-generation Americans here who are going to be poorer than their parents. That's never happened in the States before, and it's going to have massive social repercussions here.

In India, 100 of the richest people own assets worth 25% of the gross domestic product. There's something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties.

You can't have the capitalist system if an increasing number of people think it is unjust.

You cannot make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose incomes are ten times greater than yours.

I grew up hearing over and over, to the point of tedium, that "hard work" was the secret of success: "Work hard and you'll get ahead" or "It's hard work that got us where we are." No one ever said that you could work hard - harder even than you ever thought possible - and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt.

The intergenerational poverty that troubles us so much today is predominantly a poverty of values.

We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people, so just punishing rich people is as bad for the economy as punishing anyone. Let's not punish anyone.

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.

If the poor only had profiles there would be no difficulty in solving the problem of poverty

The poor of the world cannot be made rich by the redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape.

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.