Bernard Baruch Quotes

The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.

I think the point about ActionAid is what it's asking people to do is engage with poor people in developing countries and understand what their lives are like and understand how the way we live our lives impacts on theirs.

At the same time as we are closing our borders we are sending mixed signals to countries where we are helping the rich, and the poor will cross the borders to come here.

Countries that will not tax their elite who expect us to come in and help them serve their people are just not going to get the kind of help from us that historically they may have.

The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.

Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral.

There is no doubt that the world economy is in trouble. But if governments or individuals use this as an excuse to reduce assistance to the world's poorest people, they will only multiply the seriousness of the problem for the world as a whole.

It's easy to sit in relative luxury and peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third World debts.

More than one billion people in the world live on a dollar a day or less. Nothing keeps them poor more than barriers and subsidies in wealthy countries, which cost the developing world much more than it gets in aid.

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

… all governments have the moral duty to do everything possible to ensure humanitarian assistance to those suffering because of … conflict, both within and beyond the country’s borders.

The money from wealthy nations to confront some very real global poverty and economic issues is largely given out of guilt.

My primary goal is to eradicate poverty; I believe it is immoral and a stain on our society. And so when I despair or get angry, I take the time to think about how I can best achieve that goal - and then I get to work.

We pay billions - hundreds of billions of dollars to supporting other countries that are in theory wealthier than we are.

There is no country on earth that has done more for our own poor and for the poor around the world. We are not the ones that need to be targeted.

To those peoples 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 - not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

The question before the advanced nations is not whether they can afford to help the developing nations, but whether they can afford not to do so.

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.

People from the world's richest countries should be prepared to accept the burden of debt reduction for heavily indebted poor countries, and should urge their leaders to fulfill the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by the year 2015.

The possession of wealth does not confer upon the wealthy the right to take advantage of the less fortunate.

America is a world leader, but we should not be its policeman or ATM.

America needs to rethink how we distribute our foreign aid around the world.

The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.

Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary, in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries.

Those on the downside of rising economic inequality generally do not want government policies that look like handouts. They typically do not want the government to make the tax system more progressive, to impose punishing taxes on the rich, in order to give the money to them. Redistribution feels demeaning. It feels like being labeled a failure.