Nina Shaw Quotes

When you create more small businesses, you create small entrepreneurship. Out of that comes self-determination and employment.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

Every thoughtful and kind-hearted person must regard with interest any device or plan which promises to enable at least the more intelligent, enterprising, and determined part of those who are not capitalists to cease to labor for hire.

You can be out of slavery and have the right to vote, but unless you have access to capital, industry and technology, you can't fulfill your dreams.

In America, the problems of poverty and low income, particularly for minorities, are disproportionately focused in the inner cities. Shining a spotlight on the businesses growing in these communities is proof that any community has the potential for entrepreneurship.

I will stand up for what I believe and for what I have always believed: Every person has a right to be rich in this country and I want to help them get there.

Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself!

Good economic theory must give the people the chance to use their talents to build their own lives. We must get away from the traditional route where the rich will do the business and the poor will depend on private or public charity.

I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.

It’s what you have to do to find a way to kick poverty’s ass.

No, Islam did not lift American blacks out of poverty; capitalism did that.

It is our sacred obligation to eliminate the curse of poverty in the shortest possible time. This is non-negotiable for the Republic.

When you talk about black entrepreneurship, you're talking about addressing the foundation of what's going on with our people when we don't have any financial power. Our basic needs aren't being met in a lot of cases, so there's no way we're going to be able to tap into our potential until we address those bottom-level base needs.

Part of the American dream is 'I can own my own business, I can control my destiny. I can have the opportunity to work for myself.'

Listen, I have lived the American dream, which is something that I am deeply proud of and something that I believe every child in South Carolina or across the country should have the opportunity to do.

I want all Latinos to know the American dream is alive. I believe in economic liberty. I believe there's no demographic more suited to achieving the American dream than Latinos.

Business runs hot and cold so the more you're in charge of your own destiny, the better off you are.

There are too many African-Americans with too much money for us to have to go to anybody else for anything in terms of schools, in terms of scholarships, in terms of entrepreneurship, in terms of moving us along as a group to that place where we should be as a people.

There's no future in being poor.

You destroy the initiative of the working people if they don't feel they have a fighting chance to be a part of the American Dream.

As people of color, it took a whole generation in many ways to get us out of the kitchen, and it's gonna take us the same whole generation to get us back into the kitchen and have ownership of restaurants, hotels and stuff like that.

And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.

In my experience, poor people are the world's greatest entrepreneurs. Every day, they must innovate in order to survive. They remain poor because they do not have the opportunities to turn their creativity into sustainable income.

A rising tide doesn't raise people who don't have a boat. We have to build the boat for them. We have to give them the basic infrastructure to rise with the tide.

It's so gratifying to see people face to face who get to meet the people who are giving them a fair price for their work. They can now provide medical support for their kids, give them better education and in general have a better standard of living. God knows they deserve it.