Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

The middle class should not continue to foot the bill for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

Income inequity has to be addressed.

A considerable share of the world's population still cannot afford comfortable housing, education and quality health care.

Bush already gave obscene tax breaks to people like me and Warren Buffet, and we are saying it's not fair.

The poverty one still sees in America today is more shocking to me than anything I have seen in Ethiopia or Calcutta or Manila, and has made me, as someone living in a society of great wealth and someone who's never had to worry about the next meal, think seriously about what universal responsibility really means.

In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.

Poverty is a national issue and needs a federal response. After all, U.S. federal government policies helped produce massive income inequality by lopsided breaks for the super wealthy.

It's beyond shameful this House can pass trillions of dollars in tax breaks for those with the most security but not see it to provide its way, see its way to provide health insurance for the children most in need.

We must stop tax giveaways to rich corporations and developers while our schools are crumbling and people are losing their homes.

I am upset and completely disappointed in the government, the millionaires and billionaires in the U.S. See what's happening to the country? Look at all the health problems, the economy, the recession and crime.

Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must - must - redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition re-distributional.

If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we've got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.

You know, there are people making a lot of money in this country who can actually afford their own health care. We are in a situation where we got a safety net in place in this country for people who frankly don't need one. We got to focus on making sure we got a safety net for those who actually need it.

All over the U.S. there are people whose lives are being destroyed for lack of proper health care provision, and there is no sight more odious than the rich, powerful and arrogant trying to keep it that way.

I don't want to remember 2005 as a year that the government heaped unnecessary burdens upon American families. Stealing from the poor and middle class and giving to the rich, while increasing the deficit, is hardly responsible.

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

The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

However imperfectly, subsidies for the poor do actually reduce hunger, ease suffering and create opportunity, while subsidies for the rich result in more private jets and yachts. Would we rather subsidize opportunity or yachts? Which kind of subsidies deserve more scrutiny?

Mitt Romney has won the 2012 presidential nomination by promising Republicans that he would end a so-called 'culture of dependency' on welfare - welfare defined as 'free stuff' and food stamps for poor folks, not tax breaks for Big Oil or tax shelters for Bain executives.

There is no reason, in the capital city of the richest country in the world, for anybody to be hungry.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

Republicans look after the rich, and Democrats focus on the needs of the middle class. Neither of them looks after the poor.

No one should be richer than a ten millionaire and no one should be without a home.

Hunger, the inseparable companion of the poor, is the offspring of the unequal distribution of the wealth and the injustices in this world. The rich do not know hunger.

I don't dislike people with a lot of money, but richer people need tax relief less than others.