Gene Sperling Quotes

The first priority of any serious program against poverty is to strengthen the male role in poor families.

Let's take care of the necessities first: give people jobs, and find a way to get us out of poverty.

I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.

… mankind will no longer passively submit to crushing poverty with its effects of death, disease, and decline.

Think about it: Every educated person is not rich, but almost every education person has a job and a way out of poverty. So education is a fundamental solution to poverty.

When you talk about war on poverty it doesn't mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today.

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

I want poverty to end in tomorrow's Pakistan. I want every girl in Pakistan to go to school.

I contend that, in spite of all that might be said about Watergate, Richard Nixon was good for the poor people of America.

For people who are at the bottom economically, the world is becoming a harder and harder place. And yet the incentives to become rich are so great because enormous amounts of wealth are being accumulated. And so those two things, that carrot and stick, are beating people along this trajectory of trying desperately to move up in the world.

I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.

Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn't billions of dollars people needed right away.

Poverty must be reduced not only for reasons of moral and justice, but also of security.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about 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.

I lived through a golden period where society felt that it was good to help people who didn't have a great deal of money fulfil their potential.

The best way poor people can come out of their poverty is to get on the global highway, not on some dirt side road.

I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect - and help, if necessary - than many people who are superficially more successful.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

I would like to solemnly reaffirm, that poverty is not a fatality.

It isn't the rich people's fault that poor people are poor. Poor people who get an education and work hard in this country will stop being poor. That should be the goal for all poor people everywhere.

It is unacceptable that someone can work full time - and work hard - and not be able to lift themselves out of poverty.

For a country boy, poor as I was, whose constant worry was to be able to have enough to eat, the Army guaranteed one's survival.

Those born into poverty or on the margins of society require our extra support to realize their dreams.

Ridding the world of poverty is, of course, a fantasy.

To help the poor to a capacity for action and liberty is something essential for one's own health as well as theirs: there is a needful gift they have to offer which cannot be offered so long as they are confined by poverty.