Martin McGuinness Quotes

I think we have to keep working enormously hard to see that every single Indigenous child - every Australian child - has true equality of opportunity. We've got to work harder at it. I think, you know, the heartland issue for us is the gap; the gap in life expectancy in this country.

Unless we labor to help others achieve a reasonable stake in society, we may find ourselves losing the society in which we have too great a stake.

The Texas Republican Party is in many respects like the national party. We have different components that all add value in different ways, whether it's the Tea Party on fiscal questions, whether it's the so-called establishment that's focused on economic development questions, moving states like Texas forward.

When I see the sort of mindless tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to education, I just think we've got it exactly backward in this country.

In the last twelve years, we have come some distance towards reconciliation and the breaking down of disadvantage. Let us take encouragement from what has been achieved and set our minds and hearts to end the remaining roadblocks.

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.

Well, I think the Republican Party is the more populist party.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

In these difficult times, when tough decisions are required, the differences between Labour and the Tories are becoming much clearer. One party believes in intervention to reduce social and economic costs and the other believes in market forces and letting things take their course.

The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDs, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of those wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead - everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

I've seen it with my own eyes: When government takes money from the poor and the middle class, everyone suffers.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people aren't given equality of opportunity.

The Republican Party is terrific at determining how a program will impact the federal budget, but we're not nearly as good as the Democrats in explaining to people how our agenda will directly benefit them and their families.

When it comes to serious cuts to major programs like Medicaid, the American people are not calling for leadership but magic. They want cuts with no pain.

I really do think the things that make our society what it is are under threat. It should be about everyone having the potential to be what they're going to be.

The Republicans throw money at crime and military defense the way the Democrats do at poverty and welfare.

It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation .... A nation cannot be confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.

In the old days the problems of government were few and political, now they are many and are economic and sociological ...

Bribing rich people to help poor people, rather than helping poor people directly, is a popular approach because the cost of tax breaks doesn't show up on the government books.

The tensions between order and liberty, between opportunity and social justice will always be there, but that’s freedom.

Is it possible for men, however far apart in outward circumstances, for the capitalist and the working-man, to use the common phrase, to meet as individuals beneath a friendly roof, open their minds each to each, and not have their "class theories" insensibly modified by the kindly attrition of a personal acquaintance? In the light of our experience I should say not.

Democracy really depends not only on not just having a middle class but having wealth distributed relatively evenly across the society so that people buy into the legitimacy of the system

How to Turn Democrats & Republicans Into Americans

The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible.