Bernard Baruch Quotes

Bend everything toward improving the standard of living of the people.

When you talk about war on poverty it doesn't mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today.

The deeper purpose of democratic government is to assist as many of its citizens as possible - especially those who need it most - to improve their conditions of life, to retain all personal liberty which does not adversely affect their neighbors, and to pursue the happiness which comes with security and an opportunity for recreation and culture.

We will not rest until this war [on poverty] is won.

Governance should be designed as an equalizer. Democrats are more inclined towards working families and those who are struggling for a better life.

You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing, but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government.

The middle-class America of my youth was another country.

The idea that America is the best place in the world to start out poor, so long as you are willing to work hard, no longer seems to be true. One way of proving that is to ask how accurately your family's income when you were growing up predicted what your own would be. If the American dream were alive, your family's income would not predict your own that well…. Well, on that measure, America is now less the land of opportunity than France, than Germany, than Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. The only other rich economy that the U.S. outscores in this respect is — you guessed it — the UK. Abolish the estate tax and America will be a serious contender for the bottom of the opportunity league.

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

Society’s willingness to provide for the poor among them increases when the standard of living is advancing.

… mankind will no longer passively submit to crushing poverty with its effects of death, disease, and decline.

A strong economy is perfectly consistent with concern for equity and economic justice.

We want the same standard of life Canadians enjoy and take for granted.

The health of a nation is not just about its consumption expenditures …. one of the things that makes America such a great nation, and why so many people aspire to this American ideal of middle-class security, is that it's about more than that. It's about more than how much you can purchase with the dollar. It's about this feeling of security and about being able to give your kids a better life than you had. And that is really the foundation—one of the major founding principles of our country

Usually, so far as improvement in the people's economic conditions is concerned, humanitarians simply play the role of the busybody.

The economy must provide justice as well as prosperity.

In a good society, those in the middle and at the bottom ought to benefit significantly from economic growth. When the country prospers, everybody should prosper.

I have tried to suggest that injustice is not necessary economic -- that the economics can work, and has often worked, when the constituency for it is animated. The politics of equality -- that is a little harder.

What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.

America just works better when more people have a chance to live their dreams

I didn't have any personal goals when I came, but after being in politics - after seeing people, their difficulties, their wants - I think our goal has to be to eliminate poverty from India.

In my experience, all Americans - Republicans, Democrats, and everyone in between - want roughly the same thing: an assurance that if they work hard, they can create a better life for themselves and their families. They want to feel safe in their communities and secure in their future.

The fact that anyone lives in America is the single reason poverty is never a death sentence, and transforms it instead into - at worst - an obstacle on the path to a better life and road to freedom and success.

Our Party maintains the improvement of the people's living conditions as the most important of the numerous state affairs.

There should be whole-hearted, full commitment to remove poverty - only we are doing it.