Charan Das Mahant Quotes

… poor people deserve access to food, education, housing, and medical services

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

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

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.

Clean water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floor, all of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights.

I wish that every Chinese citizen can live a life of satisfaction, every peasant child can go to school and every person reaching a working age can have a job. I wish people wouldn't have to worry about medical care if they are sick, particularly those in rural areas. I believe that this is the dream of every Chinese person.

Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.

When they favor the access of other people to education and health care, the countries of the North not only demonstrate generosity or solidarity, but also implement the principles of respecting and promoting human rights.

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.

Destroy poverty, that source of crime, by assuring to each the satisfaction of all needs! And how difficult is this to achieve?

What people want is their basic needs. So I'm trying to help people ensure their basic need: that means food security, healthcare, education, and job opportunity and a better life.

Peace is no mere matter of men fighting or not fighting. Peace, to have meaning for many who have known only suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health, and education, as well as freedom and human dignity - a steadily better life. If peace is to be secure, long-suffering and long-starved, forgotten peoples of the world, the underprivileged and the undernourished, must begin to realize without delay the promise of a new day and a new life.

What we are fighting isn't godlessness--this is the most godly country on earth. We aren't even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines... that helps. When we cannot cure or save a life, our patients can at least feel cared for. It should be a basic human right.

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 goal of my work is to help assure that we can create a world of abundance in which we meet the basic needs of every man, woman and child.

You need education. You need subsistence protection. We need jobs and social security. These are preconditions under which it will perhaps be possible to deal with these complex circumstances.

I cherish the creation of public space and services, especially health, housing and the comprehensive education system which dared to give so many of us ideas 'above our station.'

There is a self interest in voting for a society where there is health care for all, where there's a mental health service for all, where there is education service for all.

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.

I did what I did not to make money but to help prevent the defeat of a new system which had, at great cost, given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, a good education and a health service.

In 1995, world military spending totaled nearly $800 billion. If we redirected just $40 billion of those resources over the next 10 years to fighting poverty, all of the world's population would enjoy basic social services, such as education, health care, nutrition, reproductive health, clean water and sanitation.

The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind.

There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor, hungry, uneducated and without health coverage.

Democracy has to deliver. It is not enough for people to vote. They must also eat.

They [the people] are offered the Constitution. But the people can't eat the Constitution.