Ron Paul Quotes

Government should take care of those in America who can't care for themselves. That's a role of government.

What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.

The government's War on Poverty has transformed poverty from a short-term misfortune into a career choice.

Asking the government to help you for short periods of time is different than asking the government to take care of you for the rest of your life.

The government is becoming the family of last resort.

Of course we have compassion. We just don't believe the safety net should be used as a hammock.

The relief now given by the Poor Laws is so widely extended that no man of humanity could venture to propose their immediate abolition.

Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them — take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

Government has a final responsibility for the well-being of its citizenship. If private cooperative endeavor fails to provide work for willing hands and relief for the unfortunate, those suffering hardship from no fault of their own have a right to call upon the Government for aid; and a government worthy of its name must make fitting response.

We don’t want to turn this [social] safety net into a hammock that ends up lulling people in their lives into dependency and complacency.

The institution of such supervisatory control and surveillance over the now low orders of society as shall compel them to industry, and provide for the helpless, and thus banish those institutions of pauperism and beggary which are fastening upon the vitals of society, and are so prolific of crime and suffering in certain communities.

The first role of government is to help people who are in crisis or need. That's why we have government.

The important thing for the government to do is to help people who cannot help themselves by providing a range of support.

We must have a welfare system that we can afford, which will mean giving greater attention to directing the welfare program toward its primary purposes and its intended beneficiaries.

Liberals want to manage the damage with government programs to take care of those who have fallen between the cracks. Populists want to fix the cracks so that people don't fall in the first place.

Like all good citizens, the elderly and people with disabilities want to eradicate waste and fraud from government, but helping people with special needs meet their basic needs doesn't fit this description.

There was no welfare state, and people had to rely mainly on the Poor Law - that was all the state provided. It was very degrading, very humiliating. And there was a means test for receiving poor relief.

I've always been engaged in social protection programmes.

If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.

As more people rely on government programs, the harder it becomes to conduct the necessary reforms to preserve them to help our society's most vulnerable.

I don't believe in welfare.

People in Oklahoma don't wake up every morning wondering what the government is going to do for them.

In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

There are people who believe in expanding the welfare state across the spectrum of races and ethnicities and creeds.

My concept of government's role in people's lives is that it is limited but legitimate, and essential when people have nowhere else to turn.