Mitch Daniels Quotes

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

We don't need to solve the problem of the rich-poor gap. We need to solve the problem of common prosperity.

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

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 a proper security is an ambition to be preferred to the appetite for great wealth and great power.

How do we make sure that rising tides lift all boats and not just the yachts?

And that is that we have never been: a nation of haves and have-nots. We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it. And that's who we need to remain.

We must ensure the economy really works for all, to address unconscionable wealth and income disparities that allow access to opportunity for some over others.

Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

Unless you’re at the very top, you need a more equitable economy.

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.

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

What I have been talking about for many years is opportunity conservatism, that every policy should focus like a laser on easing the means of ascent up the economic ladder.

Eradicate poverty. This is all that matters in my country. When I am out training I think about this a lot; when I am running it is going over in my mind. As a country we cannot move forward until we eradicate poverty.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

Our goals for this nation must be nothing less than to double the size of our economy and bring prosperity and jobs, ownership and equality of opportunity to all Americans, especially those living in our nation's pockets of poverty.

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

Poverty must be reduced not only for reasons of moral and justice, but also of security.

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

I don't mind the rich getting richer, but the poor shouldn't be getting poorer, and there should be more people moving into the middle class.

Inequality has risen to the point that it seems to me worthwhile for the U.S. to seriously consider taking the risk of making our economy more rewarding for more of the people.

I worry about growing income inequality. But I worry even more that the discussion is too narrowly focused. I worry that our outrage at the top 1 percent is distracting us from the problem that we should really care about: how to create opportunities and ensure a reasonable standard of living for the bottom 20 percent.

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

Until economic freedom is attained for everybody, there can be no real freedom for anybody.

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.

Preventing poverty beats curing it.