William Shawcross Quotes

At the end of the day, philanthropy can only ever be an adjunct to what governments provide. And government coffers need to be replenished.

With Ronald Reagan in the White House, somebody had to look out for those who were not so fortunate. That's where I came in.

There are a lot of good causes out there, but they can't possibly all be served by government.

The system of volunteerism is divisive. It pits one charity against the others for the charity dollar.

The reason the government sells the census as your ticket to getting goodies - rather than as your civic duty - is that distributing goodies is now all the government does.

Government just simply can't do everything for everyone.

The welfare state creates its own victim/client constituency. By making individuals free and independent, we reduce the need for 'charity' to those truly needy citizens what we can certainly afford to help through real charity.

Very few governments have the money to meet the needs of their people….The private sector has most of the resources.

Were the superfluities of a nation valued, and made a perpetual tax or benevolence, there would be more alms-houses than poor, schools than scholars, and enough to spare for government besides.

I think, charitable foundations are, in general, a good thing.

Liberals measure compassion by counting the number of people receiving government help.

No matter how big and powerful government gets, and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers.

The government should cultivate the view also among the propertyless classes of the population, those who are the most numerous and the least educated, that the state is not only an institution of necessity but also of welfare. By recognizable and direct advantages they must be led to look upon the state not as an agency devised solely for the protection of the better-situated classes of society but also as one serving their needs and interests.

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them.

Capitalists' wet dreams is to be involved in charity.

The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state - you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax - but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned them.

Society and Government should together give priority to the poorest of poor and make efforts to provide affordable health services.

When a beggar asks us for a quarter, our instinct is to say that the State has already confiscated our quarter for his benefit, and he should go to the State about it.

The growing inequality of wealth and income distribution is both a moral and economic problem. If the wealthy are unwilling to pay more taxes, then this is going to lead to spending cuts. And if you put off the table things like national defense, then you're going to end up cutting more and more out of programs that aid the poor. So, I think there are consequences to this idea that tolerance for inequality requires us to - to just do nothing to make the wealthy contribute a higher share of resources to fund the government.

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

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.

The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

If we have more people on the receiving end of government - more people as the middle class becomes sucked in more and more to these entitlement programs, for example - then we're going to be in a place where it's going to be hard to go back. It's going to be hard to go back again. It's going to be hard to take away stuff. It's not impossible.

The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.

A welfare state is frightened of every poor person who tries to get in and every rich person who tries to get out.