Hilary Beckles Quotes

We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added.

There are too many African-Americans with too much money for us to have to go to anybody else for anything in terms of schools, in terms of scholarships, in terms of entrepreneurship, in terms of moving us along as a group to that place where we should be as a people.

Statistically after six months, if an Indigenous or non-Indigenous person has come off welfare, even long-term welfare, and has stuck in that's job for six months, then they've really broken in their own psychology the welfare reliance mentality. They're up on their own two feet.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that we should be separate, all right, but in this separate state or separate existence, the black man should be given the opportunity and the incentive to do for himself what the white man has done for himself.

For those who are able to work, work has to be seen as the best route out of poverty. For work is not just about more money - it is transformative. It's about taking responsibility for yourself and your family.

Every thoughtful and kind-hearted person must regard with interest any device or plan which promises to enable at least the more intelligent, enterprising, and determined part of those who are not capitalists to cease to labor for hire.

It's a powerful thing to know that you are empowering someone to lift themselves out of poverty.

Good economic theory must give the people the chance to use their talents to build their own lives. We must get away from the traditional route where the rich will do the business and the poor will depend on private or public charity.

The new woman is essentially an independent labour unit whose energy is used not to serve the interests of a private family economy, but to perform socially useful and necessary labour.

As part of the realization of the aim to eradicate racism in our country, we must strive to create and strengthen a black capitalist class… because we come from among the black oppressed, many among us feel embarrassed to state this goal as nakedly as we should.

I have confidence, not only in this country and her institutions, but in the endurance, capacity, and destiny of my people. We will, as opportunity offers and ability serves, seek our places, sometimes in the field of letters, arts, sciences, and the professions. More frequently mechanical pursuits will attract and elicit our efforts; more still of my people will find employment and livelihood as the cultivators of the soil.

At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race, economic independence.

In the past, the public assistance programs have been too much concerned with the mere dispatching of monthly checks. … it is high time that some concerted effort be made to get people off the rolls who can sustain themselves.

Skills development as a means to income generation is the key to integrate vulnerable migrants into the mainstream of society and to equip them for an eventual return home.

My mother insists women must have financial independence, which is why I completed my degree in medicine.

When women can support themselves, have entry to all the trades and professions, with a house of their own over their heads and a bank account, they will own their bodies and be dictators in the social realm.

The able bodied poor don't want or need charity.... All they need is financial capital.

My experience in life tells me that the values that are now being labeled 'conservative' are the only way that blacks can get ahead.

Compassion, however, should mean providing a mechanism to escape poverty rather than simply maintaining people in an impoverished state by supplying handouts. By doing this we give them an opportunity to elevate their personal situations, which eventually decreases our need to take care of them and empowers them to be able to exercise compassion toward others.

I have made revenue collection a frontline institution because it is the one which can emancipate us from begging. If we can get about 22% of GDP we should not need to disturb anybody asking for aid; instead of coming here to bother you, give me this, give me this, I shall come here to greet you, to trade with you.

Woman's ability to earn money is better protection against the tyranny and brutality of men than her ability to vote.

I don't have too much interest in teaching other people how to get rich. And that isn't because I fear the competition or anything like that - Warrenhas always been very open about what he's learned, and I share that ethos. My personal behavior model is Lord Keynes: I wanted to get rich so I could be independent, and so I could do other things like give talks on the intersection of psychology and economics. I didn't want to turn it into a total obsession.

Hard as it may appear in individual instances , dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful.

The best way to help Africans today is to help them to stand on their own feet. And the best way to do that is by helping create jobs.

There's really no way to break that chain - other than winning the lottery. There's no realistic way to end generational poverty other than to actually educate people so that they can get the jobs, so that people can be self-sufficient. And to be self-sufficient around careers - not just jobs, but careers.