Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quote Share via Email Print this Page [1-20] of 30 Poverty quotesPoverty QuotesPoverty Next 20 quotes How to create a socialist state by Saul Alinsky: There are 8 levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a socialist state. The first is the most important. 1) Healthcare — Control healthcare and you control the people. 2) Poverty — Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live. 3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty. 4) Gun Control — Remove the ability to defend themselves from the Government. That way you are able to create a police state. 5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income). 6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children learn in school. 7) Religion — Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools. 8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.~ Saul Alinksy At first it was the incomes of corporations, then of rich citizens, then of well-provided widows and opulent workers, and finally the wealth of housemaids and the tips of waitresses. This is all in line with the ability to pay doctrine. The poor, simply because there are more of them, have more ability to pay than the rich.~ Frank Chodorov When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both.~ James Dale Davidson Republics end through luxury; monarchies through poverty. [Fr., Les republiques finissent par le luxe; les monarchies, par la pauvrete.]~ Charles de Montesquieu Somehow we find it hard to sell our values, namely that the rich should plunder the poor.~ John Foster Dulles The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created great unemployment and dissatisfaction. Within a year, the poor houses were filled. The hungry and homeless walked the streets everywhere. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the International Bankers was probably the Prime reason for the Revolutionary War.~ Benjamin Franklin Phil Donohue: When you see around the globe the maldistribution of wealth, the desperate plight of millions of people in underdeveloped countries, when you see so few haves and so many have-nots, when you see the greed and the concentration of power, did you ever have a moment of doubt about capitalism? And whether greed is a good idea to run on? Milton Friedman: Well first of all tell me, is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course none of us are greedy. It's only the other fella that's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The greatest achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty that you are talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kind of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system. Phil Donohue: Seems to reward not virtue as much as the ability to manipulate the system. Milton Friedman: And what does reward virtue? You think the Communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? Do you think... American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know I think you are taking a lot of things for granted. And just tell me where in the world you find these angels that are going to organize society for us? Well, I don't even trust you to do that.~ Milton Friedman If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have been content to live in a hovel, the tax gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry by taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am [taxed] while you are exempt. If a man built a ship, we make him pay for his temerity as though he had done injury to the state; if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it as though were a public nuisance.... We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery and him who drains a swamp. To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation from productive industry.... The state would say to the producer, “Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose. You shall have your full reward!”~ Henry George It would take little more than $50 billion to raise every poor person above the official poverty line, yet the percentage of the population classified as poor hardly budges, while annual welfare spending amounts to four times that much. Where's the money going?~ Robert Higgs An economy cannot long remain prosperous by government's taxing and spending more, now absorbing national output at a rate equal to the entire income of every American living west of the Mississippi. If this trend continues, America will gradually sink into the status of a Third World nation -- more unemployment, more shackles on production, more poverty.~ John Hospers Every crime is born of necessity. If you want less crime, you must change the conditions. Poverty makes crime. Want, rags, crusts, misfortune - all these awake the wild beast in man, and finally he takes, and takes contrary to law, and becomes a criminal. And what do you do with him? You punish him. Why not punish a man for having consumption? The time will come when you will see that that is just as logical. What do you do with the criminal? You send him to the penitentiary. Is he made better? Worse. The first thing you do is to try to trample out his manhood, by putting an indignity upon him. You mark him. You put him in stripes. At night you put him in darkness. His feeling for revenge grows. You make a wild beast of him, and he comes out of that place branded in body and soul, and then you won't let him reform if he wants to.~ Robert G. Ingersoll Loose the bands of wickedness, undo the bundles that oppress, let those who are broken go free, and break asunder every burden. Share your bread with the hungry, welcome into your house the afflicted and homeless; when you see a naked man, clothe him, and do not turn your back on your own flesh. Then your light will arise like the dawn, and your wound will quickly be healed. Your justice shall go before you, the glory of the Lord will closely follow you~ Isaiah If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.~ John F. Kennedy Instead of fostering a system that enables people to help themselves, America is now saddled with a system that destroys value, raises costs, hinders innovation and relegates millions of citizens to a life of poverty, dependency and hopelessness. This is what happens when elected officials believe that people’s lives are better run by politicians and regulators than by the people themselves. Those in power fail to see that more government means less liberty, and liberty is the essence of what it means to be American. Love of liberty is the American ideal.~ Charles Koch The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer people become.~ Lao-Tzu The poor despise labor when performed by slaves.~ George Mason In the 1950’s [America was] the richest nation, the richest city on earth was Detroit. They voted for change and so now it is the poorest city in America. At the same time, the nation of South Korea, of all the nations on earth, was third from the bottom. Virtually the poorest nation on earth. It is now tenth from the top. If you understand the principle, the greater freedom, the greater the wealth, you can then put any nation [on this chart]. Now you can go to Tagusagopos, you can go to Buenos Aires, you can go to Cairo, you can go to Philadelphia and all you need to know is what percentage of the Gross Domestic Product is controlled by government, and the greater the government, the greater the poverty, and that’s all politics is about. Every day politicians say, “I can make a better decision for you than you can for yourself, and let me take your money away from you and make it on your behalf” and thus make the nation poorer.~ Bob McEwen You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.~ P. J. O'Rourke This leftist political strategy to win office and power relies on something very powerful: the desire to increase the number of Americans who are dependent on getting money that is taken from other citizens. Sadly, this strategy has worked for half a century! And now it works because Americans who are trapped in this nightmare do not want their government money taken away from them!~ Star Parker You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.~ Dr. Adrian Rogers Next 20 quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print