Richard Croker Quotes

Somewhere near you, somebody right now is trying to help the indigent and poor - providing food, shelter, clothing or simple kindness.

The three things a Tammany leader most dreaded were in the ascending order of repulsiveness, the penitentiary, honest industry, and biography

I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked.

Society might have been better off without them, but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged, and so we do it. But it doesn't help the society.

People don't want charities to usurp the state as the core provider of social services.

I have the goal of getting together 30 or 40 poor kids and bringing them to live with me.

I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming.

City and state governments did little or nothing to orient the new migrants, help them find jobs, master complex bus and trolley systems to get to where the jobs were, and to make landlords repair decayed rooms—all measures requiring money invested at the start but saving billions in later welfare, crime, and compacted bitter racial and ethnic tensions.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

If everyone gives one thread, the poor man will have a shirt.

Though we cannot relieve all the distressed, we should relieve as many as we can.

We are tired of a welfare system which dehumanizes us and dispenses payments under procedures that are often ugly and paternalistic.

Tammany Hall is the cradle of modern liberalism.

The Governor has been as blind, deaf and dumb as Tammany Hall could wish him to be.

Even in the United States, 'you have a sort of welfare state, even if you don't want to admit it -- you don't allow people to die on the street.

By helping the poor, we must be able to remove their poverty. By extending help to one here and one there in the form of providing food will not remove poverty

I am entirely in accord with the idea that it is hardly worthwhile to try to give a better way of life to those who will not work and help themselves, but there are many, many people who work hard and for one reason or another have very little return for their labor.

Public welfare … must be directed increasingly toward prevention and rehabilitation—on reducing not only the long range costs in budgetary terms but the long range costs in human terms as well.

… if he is in Want, you must relieve him if you can, or else direct him how he may be relieved; you must employ him some days, or else recommend him to be employ’d. But you are not charged to do beyond your ability, only to prefer a poor Brother, that is a good Man and true before any other poor People in the same Circumstance.

You’ve got to help people that are downtrodden and poor, and I just think that that’s part of our culture. You’ve got to help people that can’t help themselves.

Tammany Hall and slavery usually found 'The Herald' on their side.

With increasing poverty, welfare dependency and violence in the United States, religion and religious organizations have an important role to play combating societal problems.

With commitment and the right investments, we can create a San Francisco where no one is forced, relegated, or allowed to sleep on the streets, and where no one endures addiction or mental illness on the streets without supportive and effective services.

When we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help.

There is no more compassionate and effective way to help poor people in New York City than to give to Robin Hood.