Dean Acheson Quotes

Of course, aid is only one small part of international development. Some of the greatest benefits to the world's poorest can be achieved through policy changes by developed countries.

Rich countries have been sending aid to poor countries for the last 60 years. And, by and large, this has failed.

The typical American-funded [foreign aid] project has American contractors who take, between overheads back home and in-the-area administrative fees, 35 to 50 percent. It used to be, by the way, that every developed country did this, but America is about the only one still doing it. And I’ve been trying to break it for a long time …. I hope I don’t have to be buried knowing that we’re still the only rich country in the world that gives this … percentage of foreign-aid money to our own people.

I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.

There has long been a debate in the aid community and in Africa about how to most effectively help situations of poverty in developing nations and underprivileged communities.

The Playground of Foreign Aid Experimentation: From 2006 to 2011, development aid from countries and multilateral organizations amounted to more than $30 billion, with limited results, much of the funds fueling mismanagement and corruption.

America needs to rethink how we distribute our foreign aid around the world.

Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.

I think a lot of the problem with foreign aid and things like that is you go in, give a bunch of stuff, and then it runs out. It's about helping them learn how to continue to be sustainable and live.

When Secretary of State for International Development, it was my mission to ensure that every taxpayer pound was spent to serve those in need, and met U.K. development objectives.

May I suggest that people in many African countries could be suffering from donation fatigue?

Billions of dollars are thrown at African countries.

In this financial year we will be spending at least $1.5 billion on foreign aid and we cannot be sure that this money will be properly spent, as corruption and mismanagement in many of the recipient countries are legend.

Foreign aid is neither a failure nor a panacea. It is, instead, an important tool of American policy that can serve the interests of the United States and the world if wisely administered.

I have dedicated many years to economic study, up to the Ph.D. level, to analyze and understand the inherent weaknesses of aid and why aid policies have consistently failed to deliver on economic growth and poverty alleviation.

It's always a tricky thing, trying to make aid sustainable.

'Dead Aid' is about the inefficacy and the limitations of large-scale aid programs in creating economic growth and reducing poverty in Africa.

To make sustainable progress in reducing extreme poverty will require improvements in both the quantity and quality of aid.

The United States should help strengthen nongovernmental humanitarian agencies working in Sudan so that they can handle an increased flow of aid.

It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to borrow money from the Chinese to go give to another country for humanitarian aid. We ought to get the Chinese to take care of the people.

Can we really believe that we are living a good life, an ethically decent life if we don't do anything serious to help reduce poverty around the world and help save the lives of children or adults who are likely to die if we don't increase the amount of aid we are giving.

We should stop giving aid to countries that hate us..

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries

The overriding purpose of foreign assistance must be genuine development, not the assuaging of Western guilt or the care and feeding of the massive network of career professionals, non-profit organizations and private sector companies that constitute the global aid industry.

That's where all the foreign aid (which might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries) went as well. The U.S. government still squanders about $20 billion a year this way, and European governments spend proportionally even more; it's all gone straight down a giant rat hole.