Chaka Fattah Quotes

Newark faces real challenges.

Mexico has not achieved the advances that the population demands or deserves.

I think 'The Wire' really is relatable. It reflects an ongoing issue across America, about inaccuracies in major cities between rich and the poor and some of the things that go on behind the red tape of council and government bodies.

Private beneficence is totally inadequate to deal with the vast numbers of the city's disinherited.

I teach at Harvard, and focusing on understanding this problem on a national level is a big priority of mine right now - where evictions are going up and down, what cities are actually instituting policies that work, what housing insecurity is doing to our cities, neighbourhoods, our kids.

We always had power shortages in the country. I was living right next to the border with China, and it was the only country I could compare to my own. When I looked across the river, it was a completely different world - there were no people dying. It looked like a place full of colour, and that's what confused me.

I am generally enthusiastic about cities. Here in the West there is a panic. Every time we have a debate about cities, we talk about the problems of cities.

Cities are drivers of growth and wealth, and at the same time, cities are becoming increasingly violent.

Baltimore obviously has a lot of problems, but there are people there that have a lot of promise.

The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries.

There are thousands on thousands in New York who have no assignable home.

Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed.

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.

How can you compare the the masses of Western Europe with our people—so patient, so accustomed to privation?

A king of a large and fruitful territory there feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day labourer in England.

All of our problems are the result of overbreeding among the working class, and if morality is to mean anything at all to us, we must regard all the changes which tend toward the uplift and survival of the human race as moral.

‘Money can't buy happiness.’ That's just a lie we tell poor people to keep them from rioting in the streets

There are many communities in the United States where the average family income is pitifully low. It is in those communities that we find the poorest educational facilities and the worst conditions of health. Why? It is not because they are satisfied to live as they do. It is because those communities have the lowest per capital wealth and income; therefore the lowest ability to pay taxes; and therefore inadequate functioning of local government.

In a society of little economic development, universal inactivity accompanies universal poverty. You survive not by struggling against nature, ... or by relentless labor; instead you survive by expending as little energy as possible...

In the developed world, income inequality within the country is the most important determinant of health standards and life expectancy.

London is the greatest city in the world, but we're at a crossroads. Ordinary Londoners have been priced out of our city because of the housing crises. We're a city that's growing in population, but the infrastructure can't cope with the growth.

You can give poor people this royal wedding to watch and make them feel good about themselves, or you can give them something useful like, I don't know... a toaster.

What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.

Many of the problems of poverty and need are really problems of physical infrastructure: not enough hospitals, too few schools, insufficient roads, bridges, and a lack of tools. This is what makes traditional philanthropy so daunting. You could build a thousand new hospitals in some parts of the world and barely make a difference.

There is sometimes a tendency to assume that everyone in this great country has adequate housing. But when you go to certain places, certain neighborhoods, both urban and rural, you find out that's not the case, and I think we have to do much more.