Charles Murray Quotes

Families in Logan, West Virginia, were going through the same struggles as families in the Bronx, San Francisco, and Houston. This was not a West Virginia problem. This is an American problem, and it has to change.

I don't campaign for the end of the aristocracy or the upper classes; I don't really want to destroy anything at all. I just want more plurality.

The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice.

The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state.

America's 'social contract' is equal opportunity... yet we have failed in achieving that seminal goal.

The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.

Attacking poverty is very expensive, and means doing things politically that are either impossible or very difficult to bring off.

For too long, we've attached some mythic notion to government solutions, and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds.

When economist William Beveridge dreamed up the postwar welfare state he wanted to fight five 'giant evils' - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. Fast forward 65 years and it seems the last New Labour government grew an Unfair State that fuelled - not fought - one of those evils: idleness.

The idea that there is a meritocracy where anyone from any background really might have the social and economic mobility to rise to the top in Silicon Valley, those are antithetical to a lot of the principles that the Trump administration apparently stands for.

I think class is still an issue in this country.

I care about waking up to the true issues of the 21st century: inequality, diversity, and the impact of tech.

There are ways that we, as a society, the laws that we write and the contracts we build, can try to actually increase people's ability to reap the reward from their own potential. But we put barriers in front of them.

The welfare state is collapsing all around us. There are people that realize that we can't go on this way, but I'm not sure how many people realize how close we are to the collapse of the U.S. financial system.

It has been the case for some time that I have made myself dizzy thinking about the fact that the implementation of the Three-fold Program of the government, above all in the area of food and clothing, has been experiencing difficulties.

A universal voucher program would change the face of poverty in this country.

This notion that borders wouldn't matter, that we would have commonality of interests around the world. Well, guess who got there first? The plutocrats.

Rising inequality has changed family dynamics for all socioeconomic groups.

I've seen a lot of poverty - coming up as a young child, lost hopes and dreams and people that never had a chance to have a decent quality of life. I believe we can do a lot greater than that.

When you question this war on poverty, you get all the criticisms from adherents to the status quo who just don't want to see anything change. We got to have the courage to face that down, just as we did in the welfare reform of the late 1990s, and if we succeeded, we can help resuscitate this culture and get people back to work.

I think 'Holler If Ya Hear Me' is almost 'A Raisin in the Sun' 50 years later, with just a different 20-year-old voice speaking the words. But it's about access to the American dream and equal lives having equal value in America. It's still holding a mirror up to us so we can see ourselves.

Chronic insecurity will not be overcome by minimum wage laws, tax credits, means-tested benefits, or workfare.

I was one of the poorest people in America.

For all the obsession in Washington and in college faculty lounges over income inequality, why isn't there more outrage over government policies that exacerbate the problem? There are hundreds of programs that make the poor poorer and increase poverty in America.

Politically it's easy to salve one's conscience, no matter that salving it rarely makes the problem go away. You join the Labour Party, write articles attacking the privileged, give the money you spend on opera tickets to homeless charities, and vow never to go to anything that can be considered elitist again.