Daniel De Leon Quotes

We must embark on a bold new program for ... the improvement and growth of undeveloped areas. More than half the people of the world are living in conditions approaching misery .... For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required

The Trustees intend to relieve such unfortunate persons as cannot subsist here [England], and establish them in an orderly manner, so as to form a well regulated town…. By such a Colony, many families, who would otherwise starve, will be provided for, and made masters of houses and lands…. The Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia in America. … are impowered to collect benefactions; and lay them out in cloathing, arming, sending over, and supporting colonies of the poor, whether subjects on foreigners, in Georgia

… only today, or yesterday at the earliest, after the long millenniums of man's life on this planet, has he acquired the technical skill, the command over the forces of nature, the physical power to produce enough and more for all his children upon the face of the earth.

Poverty, discrimination and ignorance decrease growth.

… the many armed conflicts which continue to afflict the world today present us daily with dramatic images of misery, hunger, illness and death. Without peace, there can be no form of economic development.  Violence never begets peace, the necessary condition for development.

There is no doubt that many expensive national projects may add to our prestige or serve science. But none of them must take precedence over human needs.

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

Something is wrong that we have to feed so many. Why should there be poverty with all of our science and technology? There is no deficit in human resources - it is a deficit in human will.

Why should there be hunger and deprivation in any land, in any city, at any table, when man has the resources and the scientific know-how to provide all mankind with the basic necessities of life? There is no deficit in human resources. The deficit is in human will.

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

Tomorrow, I'm going to a soup kitchen in Mobile. I think that will symbolize the insensitivity of this administration to human needs.

I made money. I wanted to give it back to Africa but I wanted to give it back in a meaningful way. So I really want to do something which deals with the root of the problem of hunger, of disease, of ills we have in our society.

The work of Nigeria is not complete for as long as there is any one Nigerian who goes to bed on empty stomach.

There are the manufacturing multitudes of England; they must have work, and find markets for their work; if machines and the Black Country are ugly, famine would be uglier still.

It's more important to try to do something for the crores of poor people of my country.

Everybody keeps saying that India's a poor country. Yes, we have poverty. But I blame the government of India, the political establishment, for their failure to educate and therefore their failure to control the poverty.

The goal of my work is to help assure that we can create a world of abundance in which we meet the basic needs of every man, woman and child.

The 1 to 2 billion poorest in the world, who don't have food for the day, suffer from the worst disease: globalization deficiency. The way globalization is occurring could be much better, but the worst thing is not being part of it. For those people, we need to support good civil societies and governments.

More combat planes, missiles and soldiers won't provide additional bread for our families, desks for our schools, or medicine for our clinics.

I have to try and uplift the standard of living for the people in Zambia. If I cannot do that, I will have failed.

The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.

When people said Africa would change me, I didn't understand what they meant. To see the poverty in the townships, for instance, is overwhelming. I found it heart-wrenching to see young children walking barefoot and hungry in the dirt. I'm the kind of person who wants to change the world right here and now, so I got frustrated.

In my view, the humanity of our world can be measured against the fate of Africa.

The great hinderance to the development of this continent has lain in the lack of capital.