John Kenneth Galbraith Quotes

I've seen it with my own eyes: When government takes money from the poor and the middle class, everyone suffers.

I believe in preferring the sanctity of human rights to the sanctity of property rights. I believe that the chief concern of government shall be for the poor because, as it is witnessed, the rich have ample means of their own to care for themselves.

Government has a responsibility to the have-nots.

The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich

We used to wage war on poverty—not poor people.

We've got to take care of the poor.

I don't think they [Congress] ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.

We are undemocratic, then, in our religion, as is proved by our efforts to “raise” the poor.

I am profoundly disturbed by any attempt to take government responsibility away from government … it is government’s responsibility to educate all of our children …. The fundamental responsibility for poverty of this country does not belong to the churches; it belongs to the government.

We should remember the poor.

A New Dealer regrets poverty and deplores the fact that it is necessary for society to slough off its misfits as an individual sheds his impurities and his diseases. But New Dealers believe that human want and human distress should be prevented or at least ameliorated.

Bribing rich people to help poor people, rather than helping poor people directly, is a popular approach because the cost of tax breaks doesn't show up on the government books.

For the good of Spain, I should like there to be rather fewer rich people and rather fewer poor.

Yet today our splendid theory of government is confronted by a great peril. We have become blind to evils that menace us. We are confronted with glutted markets and idle labor. It is a condition that makes it possible for a few men to become landlords of a proud city like this while God's poor are packed in the slums. Such a condition is not only a menace to Republican institutions, but a travesty upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.

My perspective is never gonna change on that... We've got to do a much better job to take care of poor people, because you cannot put all the poor people in bad neighborhoods, send them to bad schools, and say, 'Good luck in life.' That's just not right.

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

If it doesn't reach the last poor man, your constitution is wrong.

Public policy today is favoring the rich, not the poor. It's not addressing the needs of the poor.

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.

If your Income Taxes go to help out the less fortunate, there could be no legitimate kick against it in the world. This is becoming the richest, and the poorest Country in the world. Why? Why, on account of an unequal distribution of the money.

The endurance of the inequalities of life by the poor is the marvel of human society.

My message to David Cameron, as the head of our government, is to seriously think again about this Robin Hood tax, the tax to help the poor by taking a little bit from the rich.

You see, the poverty program for the last five years have been buy-off programs.

The great responsibility that we have today is to put the poor and the near poor back on front of the American agenda.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.