Robert Kennedy Quotes

Economic growth doesn't mean anything if it leaves people out.

My mission is to eradicate poverty.

When governance improves, there will be less have-nots and more haves.

Poverty is not inevitable. It is a human ill that we can fight if we decide to do so together.

The only way to have a better world and end poverty is by closing the gap between the top and the bottom.

Haiti's economy cannot be built by and benefit just a privileged few. It must be built by and benefit all Haitians.

Trickle-down theories do not address the legitimate aspirations of the poor. We must lift those at the bottom so that poverty is erased from the dictionary of modern India.

The best social programs we've had in this country are those that have united the middle class and the poor.

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take food from the soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them. The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

We do not destroy ambition, nor do we seek to divide our wealth into equal shares on stated occasions. We continue to recognize the greater ability of some to earn more than others. But we do assert that the ambition of the individual to obtain for him and his a proper security, a reasonable leisure, and a decent living throughout life is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

Huge inequality gaps in a democratic society will tend to erode the respect for and security of doctrines of private property. The large majority must either own property or have reasonable prospects of attaining property if they are to support and maintain private property laws and traditions.

In a good society, those in the middle and at the bottom ought to benefit significantly from economic growth. When the country prospers, everybody should prosper.

We cannot and will not rest until we have won true swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions - until we have wiped out poverty from our land.

Worrying about the poor is one thing. To contend that equality is necessary for growth is an altogether different and more radical idea.

My goal is to eradicate poverty. I think we can't have equality until we eradicate poverty.

The Curse of poverty has no justification in our age...The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.

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

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.

Giving a minimum wage reduces inequality significantly.

Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.

I've often said that far more sensible than a 'make poverty history' campaign would be a 'make wealth history' campaign. It is, after all, the wealthy people who do all the damage. The less money you earn, the fewer resources you use up.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well.