Here are historic quotes on poverty and welfare from:
- Mother Teresa – Took a vow of poverty and said, “I did not let one single tear come.”
- Bill Clinton – Mom’s work gave a “sense of pride and meaning and direction.” He couldn’t imagine a kid growing up without that.
- Milton Friedman – Replace the “ragbag of specific programs.”
- Martin Luther King – Federal Programs aim at poverty but by “first solving something else.”
- Ronald Reagan – “We declared a war on poverty, and poverty won.”
- James Madison – Didn’t see in the Constitution spending on “objects of benevolence.”
- Lyndon Johnson – This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty.” But it can’t be “conquered by government alone.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt – “No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its Human Resources.”
- Benjamin Franklin – Careful helping the poor “lest we do more harm than good.”
- Margaret Thatcher – Too many people think, “I have a problem; it is the Government’s job to cope with it.”
- Mollie Orshansky (Ms. Poverty) – “If I write about the poor, I don’t need a good imagination—I have a good memory.”
- John F. Kennedy – “We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to independence.“
Many of these leaders had much to say about the problem of poverty and the purpose of welfare. Here is more information on those topics:
Mother Teresa
Quotes from Mother Teresa on poverty and the poor from her book No Greater Love” are available here.
Temptation: “Our Lord wants me to be a free nun covered with the poverty of the cross. Today, I learned a good lesson. The poverty of the poor must be so hard for them. While looking for a home I walked and walked till my arms and legs ached. I thought how much they must ache in body and soul, looking for a home, food and health. Then, the comfort of Loreto [her former congregation] came to tempt me. ‘You have only to say the word and all that will be yours again,’ the Tempter kept on saying … Of free choice, my God, and out of love for you, I desire to remain and do whatever be your Holy will in my regard. I did not let a single tear come.”
Quote from Spink, Kathryn (1997). Mother Teresa: A Complete Authorized Biography. New York. HarperCollins, p.37. See more at Wikipedia – Mother Teresa – available here.
Bill Clinton
Work: “I used to get up in the morning and watch my mother get ready to go to work. And we had a lot of trouble in my home when I was a kid, and she still got up every day, no matter what the hell was going on, and she got herself ready and went to work….. It kept food on the table, but it gave us a sense of pride and meaning and direction….I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for a child to grow up in a home where the child never saw anybody go to work…. I know that it’s sometimes hazardous to extrapolate your own experiences…. But on this I don’t think it is.”
From the book “American Dream”, by Jason Deparle, page 113
Welfare quote: “In a Clinton administration we ‘re going to put an end to welfare as we know it.”
Speech on October 23, 1991 – From the book “American Dream”, page 4
As quoted and described by Author Jason Deparle: More than most liberals, Clinton showed an intuitive confidence in the welfare poor. ‘Part of it was being a governor for twelve years and going to the welfare office and meeting people on welfare,’ he told me. Plus, ’I’d always known poor folks, I just never thought they were helpless.’ …. He called them ‘scrappy survivors’. He never adopted the apologetic tones of mainstream liberalism.
From the book “American Dream”, pages 150-151
Milton Friedman
Poverty Quote:
“To put it differently, we might all of us be willing to contribute to the relief of poverty, provided everyone else did. We might not be willing to contribute the same amount without such assurance….. Suppose one accepts, as I do, this line of reasoning as justifying governmental action to alleviate poverty; to set, as it were, a floor under the standard of life of every person in the community.”
From the book “Capitalism and Freedom” Page 191
Welfare Reform – Negative Income Tax:
“First, reform the present welfare system by replacing the ragbag of specific programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash – a negative income tax ……
……. the negative income tax would have enormous advantages. It is directed specifically at the problem of poverty. It gives help in the form most useful to the recipient, namely, cash. It is general – it does not give help because the recipient is old or disabled or sick or lives in a particular area, or any of the other many specific features entitling people to benefits under current programs. It gives help because the recipient has a low income. It makes explicit the cost born borne by taxpayers. Like any other measure to alleviate poverty, it reduces the incentive of people who are helped to help themselves. However, if the subsidy rate is kept at a reasonable level, it does not eliminate that incentive entirely. An extra dollar earned always means more money available for spending.”
From the book “Free to Choose” Pages 120 and 122
Dr. Martin Luther King
Guaranteed Income:
“At no time has a total, coordinated, and fully adequate program been conceived. As a consequence, fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.”
“In addition to the absence of coordination and sufficiency, the programs of the past all have another failing – they are indirect. Each seeks to solve poverty by first solving something else.”
“I am now convinced that the simplest solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.”
“A host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement.”
From the book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”, pages 171 – 173
On job training:
“ ‘Training’ becomes a way of avoiding the issue of employment, for it does not ask the employer to change his policies and job structures. Instead of training for uncertain jobs, the policy of the government should be to subsidize American business to employ individuals whose education is limited. This policy may be considered a bribe by some, but it is a step consonant with reality.” From the book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?“, page 208
On “Hard, Solid Thinking”
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
From the book “Strength to Love“, page 14.
Ronald Reagan
Poverty Quote:
“ We declared a war on poverty and poverty won”
“ Federal welfare programs have created a massive social problem.”
“ Let’s start making our welfare system the first rung on America’s ladder of opportunity.”
From 1988 State of Union Address
Lyndon Johnson
Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope–some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.
January 8, 1964 State of the Union Address
“For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward to the Great Society. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.”
“What you are being asked to consider is not a simple or an easy program. But poverty is not a simple or an easy enemy. It cannot be driven from the land by a single attack on a single front. Were this so we would have conquered poverty long ago. Nor can it be conquered by government alone… ” Lyndon B. Johnson’s Special Message to Congress, March 16, 1964
John F. Kennedy
“We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to independence. We must find ways of returning them to a participating and productive role in the community.”
“But merely responding with a “relief check” to complicated social or personal problems — such as ill health, faulty education, domestic discord, racial discrimination, or inadequate skills — is not likely to provide a lasting solution.“
Franklin D. Roosevelt
“No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its Human Resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally it is the greatest menace to our social order.” As quoted on the FDR Washington Memorial
“More than two billion dollars have also been expended in direct relief to the destitute. Local agencies, of necessity, determined the recipients of this form of relief. With inevitable exceptions, the funds were spent by them with reasonable efficiency, and as a result, the actual want of food and clothing in the great majority of cases has been overcome. But the stark fact before us is that great numbers still remain unemployed.”
“A large proportion of these unemployed and their dependents have been forced on the relief rolls. The burden on the Federal Government has grown with great rapidity. We have here a human as well as an economic problem. When humane considerations are concerned, Americans give them precedence. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.”
“The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief. ” Annual Message to Congress, January 5, 1935
James Madison
Addressing the question of expenses for French refugees from the Haitian Revolution:
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” More
Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 3rd Congress, 1st Session, page 170. January 10, 1794. Annals summarize speeches in the third person, quotes reworked from the text.
Benjamin Franklin
Compassion: “To relieve the misfortunes of our fellow creatures is concurring with the Deity; it is godlike; but, if we provide encouragement for laziness, and supports for folly, may we not be found fighting against the order of God and Nature, which perhaps has appointed want and misery as the proper punishments for, and cautions against, as well as necessary consequences of, idleness and extravagance? Whenever we attempt to amend the scheme of Providence, and to interfere with the government of the world, we had need be very circumspect, lest we do more harm than good “
Benjamin Franklin (Smyth, writings of Benjamin Franklin, 3:135)
Poverty and Welfare Quote: “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. — I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. 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.”
Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766
Margaret Thatcher
Poverty and Welfare Quote: I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand “I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!” or “I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!” “I am homeless, the Government must house me!” and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations, because there is no such thing as an entitlement unless someone has first met an obligation and it is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate—“It is all right. We joined together and we have these insurance schemes to look after it”. That was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system and so some of those help and benefits that were meant to say to people: “All right, if you cannot get a job, you shall have a basic standard of living!” but when people come and say: “But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!” You say: “Look” It is not from the dole. It is your neighbor who is supplying it and if you can earn your own living then really you have a duty to do it and you will feel very much better!”
Interview for Woman’s Own September 23, 1987
History of English “Relief” 1790 to 1835
“About the end of the last century, the upper and middle classes of England reasoned a priori (and influenced , undoubtedly, by the French Revolution) came to the conclusion that every man ought to be able to make a living for himself and his family, and that, if he could not make it, it should be furnished him; they not only came to this conclusion, but they acted upon it, and for about fifty years there was no man in England who, however idle, vicious or even dangerous he might be, could not obtain from the “Rates” (that is, the taxes on land) the means of supporting himself and his family of six, or ten, or twenty children and grandchildren.
Instead, however, of increased comfort and prosperity and of diminished suffering, the tide of poverty, most unaccountably, rose higher and higher, and the flood of pauperism seemed about to engulf not only the paupers themselves, but the whole population of England. There was not only a constant failure of all the efforts to check pauperism and crime, but the anomaly was apparently presented that the very efforts intended to check them merely served to increase them.”
“The poor laws of England were undoubtedly instituted for the most benevolent purpose; but it is evident they have failed in attaining it. They certainly mitigate some cases of sever distress which might otherwise occur, though the state of the poor who are supported by parishes, considered in all its circumstances, is very miserable”.
“Every penny bestowed that tends to render the condition of the pauper more eligible than that of the independent laborer is a bounty on indolence and vice. We have found that as the poor rates are at present administered, they operate as bounties of this description… ”
“The history of the poor laws abounds with instances of a legislation which has been worse than unsuccessful, which has not merely failed in effecting its purposes, but has been active in producing effects which were directly opposed to them, has created whatever it was intended to prevent and fostered whatever it was intended to discourage.”
“Can we wonder if the uneducated are seduced into approving a system which aims its allurement at all the weakest parts of our nature, which offers marriage to the young, security to the anxious, ease to the lazy, and impunity to the profligate?”
All quotes from the book Public Relief and Private Charity by Josephine Shaw Lowell. G.P Putnam’s Sons. 1884. Available here.
Mollie Orshansky – Ms. Poverty
Mollie Orshansky developed the poverty threshold in 1963 while working for the Social Security Administration (SSA). To her colleagues and friends she was known as Ms. Poverty.
“If it is not possible to state unequivocally ‘how much is enough,’ it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on an average, is too little.”
Mollie Orshansky – Counting the Poor: Another Look at the Poverty Profile. SSA Bulletin 1965
“There seems sufficient basis, however, for adopting as a working hypothesis that perhaps the single medium most conducive to the growth of poverty and dependency is poverty itself. The corollary might be that, although adequate family income alone is not a sufficient condition to guarantee that children will escape low-income status as adults, it is usually a necessary one. There are people whose only legacy to their children is the same one of poverty and deprivation that they received from their own parents.” Mollie Orshansky – Children of the Poor, SSA Bulletin 1963
Poverty Quote: “If it be true that the children of the poor today are themselves destined to be the impoverished parents of tomorrow, then some social intervention is needed to break the cycle, to interrupt the circuits of hunger and hopelessness that link generation to generation. For the common benefit of all we must assure the security and well-being of all our children-at the same time the Nation’s most precious and most perishable resource.”
Mollie Orshansky – Children of the Poor, SSA Bulletin 1963
“If I write about the poor, I don’t need a good imagination—I have a good memory.”
Gordon M. Fisher. Remembering Mollie Orshansky – The developer of the poverty thresholds. SSA Bulletin, Vol. 68 No3, 2008
From Mr. Gordon Fisher, Remembering Mollie Orshanksy:
One major source for Mollie’s July 1963 article was a special tabulation of Current Population Survey data, which SSA purchased from the Census Bureau at a cost of $2,500. The results showed that the median annual income of nonfarm female-headed families with children was $2,340. Orshansky was horrified when she realized that half of these families had to live for an entire year on less money than SSA had paid for one statistical tabulation. She later commented, “I determined I was going to get my $2,500 worth”
Pictures of presidents from Whitehouse.gov.