Marvin Olasky Quotes

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.

Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences—deep, corrosive, obstinate differences—radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.

There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.

If war is the solution, why didn't Roosevelt declare war on poverty?

American society as a whole can never achieve the outer-reaches of potential, so long as it tolerates the inner cities of despair.

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

Now if you are condemned to life on welfare, I'm not so sure that being in a bigger welfare village is that much better than being in a smaller welfare village.

I believe that the high rates of property crime (and some of the increase in violent crime) are part of the price you pay for freedom.

There is another world out there, the existence of which the Court, I suspect, either chooses to ignore or fears to recognize. And so the cancer of poverty will continue to grow.

A New Dealer regrets poverty and deplores the fact that it is necessary for society to slough off its misfits as an individual sheds his impurities and his diseases. But New Dealers believe that human want and human distress should be prevented or at least ameliorated.

The war on poverty had not been undertaken at the request of the poor.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

We used to wage war on poverty—not poor people.

We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced. It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise, and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty.

I understand welfare because I lived it. I understand the difference between a want and a need. The Republican Party promised to bring welfare change. We must deliver on this promise.

There's not a lot of hope coming from the inner city.

Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty.

Luxury may possibly contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor.

The second truism that we must understand is that poverty does not create our social problems, our social problems create our poverty.

Speaking as a black person, welfare is the worst thing that's ever happened to us.

One of the things I learned is that you've got to deal with the underlying social problems if you want to have an impact on crime - that it's not a coincidence that you see the greatest amount of violent crime where you see the greatest amount of social dysfunction.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

There are cultural reasons, economic competitiveness reasons. There are a lot of reasons why people are in poverty. The difference today is that increasingly they are in perpetual poverty.

There is a triangular relationship between poverty, child labour and illiteracy who have a cause and consequence relationship. We will have to break this vicious circle.