Claudio Hummes Quotes

Deep persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation’s promise …. All of us are diminished when any are hopeless.

We need to tackle extreme inequality because it is morally indefensible and socially corrosive - undermining our health, affecting our well-being, and undermining peaceful societies.

I think that there always have been and always will be at least two Americas - the poor America, the second America, tends to be in the shadows. Sometimes it's an America of people in a ghetto of color, sometimes it's an economic ghetto, but definitely there is a parallel America which people in the dominant America prefer to ignore if they can.

Half the world does not know how the other half lives.

Obviously, I have certain policy positions that I push and advocate for that would benefit people dealing in a system that breeds inequality and makes life more difficult for people.

If you're totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

Capitalism has only hurt Latin America.

To deal with radicalism and extremism, we need to deal with economic inequality. This is what I learned from my experience in Solo and then in Jakarta.

Global poverty is a powder keg ignitable by our own indifference.

The real threat to the democracy is the half a nation in poverty.

Many will see [globalization] as little more than a mask used by certain economic elites for taking away the voice of the individual citizen.

Globalization has down sides because it leaves so many people behind.

I challenge British Muslims to accept that as strongly as they feel about Iraq or counter-terrorism measures, poverty and inequality have the biggest impact on the lives of the majority of British Muslims and do the most to prevent potential being fulfilled.

Exploitation. Now, there's a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.

Poverty is a result of lack of opportunity. Lack of opportunity is about being without power, without being in a position to make choices.

Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor.

Disparity is Australia's worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to 'close the gap.'

So much has happened to obscure the dialogue about race and about gender and discrimination in general, especially where those things touch on economics.

Nobody is poor unless he stand in need of justice.

For now, capitalism is working to produce more money but does not see the people. This problem is getting worse across the world.

Unrestrained liberalism only makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker and excludes the most excluded.

The second truism that we must understand is that poverty does not create our social problems, our social problems create our poverty.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.