Social Policy Quotes

Although the big word on the left is 'compassion,' the big agenda on the left is dependency.

The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results.

Most decisions involving the way that Americans live their lives are not made in the courts.

We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced. It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise, and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty.

I mean, you know, this idea that somebody we disagree with on economic or social policy or something we have to turn into some kind of ogre or demon, I think, is a mistake. I mean, it's like telling the American people or half the American people that don't agree with you they're all fools. That's just not true.

We don't want a president who fails at domestic and foreign policy.

I don't think we can undo the past. … We have to do the best we can now...I don't think quotas are a good idea...I don't think quotas are a good idea. I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion or race or color, or nationality. … We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.

I am proud to stand with the millions of women and men who recognize that our government should legislate according to the reality of our lives - not for ideology.

Bob Rubin was opposed to signing the welfare bill. He's not exactly what I call a flaming liberal.

I think that affirmative action programs can be very important.

Why are the architects of the family-values agenda so eager to punish into the next generation? What is being served by seeking, quite literally, a tooth for a tooth?

The Left have always preferred the state to the family.

There is nothing of any consequence in education, in the economy, in city planning, in social policy that does not concern black people.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

I think that for social conservatism to make sense as a political world view, it has to have a more capacious understanding of what kind of society it wants than just saying, 'Leave us alone and let us pass laws against abortion.'

A welfare state, properly conceived, can be an integral part of a conservative society.

I looked up affirmative action once in Wikipedia, and it said, 'A measure by which white men are discriminated against,' and I got so mad.

When government grows, it breaks the family.

I believe in traditional marriage and I believe in the Defense of Marriage Act.

Abortion on demand is bad social policy.

The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.

Politics is social work with power.

Affirmitive action is extremely complex because it appears in many different forms.

I saw the real difference between politicians who supported programs like Head Start and those who didn't. I started getting really excited about politics.

The Social Security System is the one great social policy achievement of the twentieth century.