Michael Palin Quotes

On the one hand we have got to ask, are there some areas of universal benefits that are no longer affordable? But on the other hand let us look at the issue of dependency where we have trapped people in poverty through the extent of welfare that they have.

Democracy presumes that we're all created equal; competition proves we are not, or else every race would end in a tie.

Anyone who doesn't think the welfare-industrial complex is trying to increase dependency isn't paying attention.

Do we really want a society in which the stigma of going on the dole has been erased?

America is the one rich country with the biggest slums, the least democratic and least developed health system, and the most niggardly attitude against its old people.

There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

A third of all the children born today will be on welfare.

Because of the British Welfare State …, I was never hungry…. The schools I attended were free and actually acted as ladders of mobility for those randomly given the skills in the genetic lottery of life to climb them.

I think we have enough trouble finding community in this country, and sport does provide that. It is a mediocrisy, the greatest mediocrisy. If you're the best, it shows in sports. Nobody can say, 'Well, he's only there because of his connections,' or whatever. In that sense, I suppose it upholds democracy and the best in us.

Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.

No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters. That matters because we don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people.

Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.

Margaret Thatcher said,you know the problem with socialism is that eventually it will run out of other people's money. And she was absolutely right.

So many people want me to run for office because they know I have the right take on what's happening to America in terms of our competition - you know we're not going to be the number one economic force in ten years if we keep going the way we're going.

American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.

I don't feel like it's a wasted vote because I think it encourages more people like that to run. I vote for the candidates that aren't bought and paid for like the Clintons.

It is said that every people has the Government it deserves. It is more to the point that every Government has the electorate it deserves; for the orator of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.

As young people make diverse claims on the promise of a radical democracy, articulating what a fair and just world might be, they are increasingly met with forms of physical, ideological and structural violence.

Our liberty will not be secured at the sword's point... We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it. And when the people reaches that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn.

In some instances even certain social services that normally were supplied, or pre-empted by the state. Take the United States, the [Ronald] Reagan administration is withdrawing assistance, all kinds of welfare programs, and if people don't improvise their own resources to cope with problems of the ageing, problems of the sick, problems of the young, problems of the poor, problems of tenant rights, who will?

We'll be competitive with organized labor, we're also competitive with regular, unorganized labor, working people who see their stakes and their future in the plans we're putting forward to move Massachusetts forward.

I like to help poor people who got no chance. If rich people don't, who will? Not other poor people, that's for sure.

Why wouldn't somebody have the same legal rights as everybody else in our society? What is that about? I don't even understand them putting same sex marriage on the ballot. So if fifty-one percent of the people say it shouldn't happen, it's not going to happen? You can get fifty-one percent of the people to say just about anything - to say let's bring back slavery, or all Mexicans should be slaves, or something absolutely crazy like that. Does that mean we do it?

You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.