Bill Shorten Quotes

I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out.

Poverty is an artificial, external imposition on a human being; it is not innate in a human being. And since it is external, it can be removed. It is just a question of doing it.

I've seen a lot of poverty - coming up as a young child, lost hopes and dreams and people that never had a chance to have a decent quality of life. I believe we can do a lot greater than that.

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.

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

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

The great mass of the poor in countries are become an hereditary race, and it is next to impossible them to get out of that state of themselves

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

I hope that most of us believe that we actually would all benefit from living in a more equitable society. If that's not happening, we're squandering human potential.

We need to find ways to elevate the expectations, particularly of those individuals who may start off on a lower socioeconomic rung, who might be seen as disadvantaged. But, you know, the reason I say be seen as disadvantaged, it's because life is so short, and there's so much that can change.

Imagine a society in which there were neither rich nor poor. What evils, afflictions, sorrows, disorders, catastrophes, disasters, tribulations, misfortunes, agonies, calamities, despair, desolation and ruin would be unknown to man!

I started out young and idealistic, and it was all about social justice and fair distribution of resources. I didn't understand why everybody couldn't be equally prosperous.

When you come from desperate poverty, and that's exactly what I come from, you know that nonsenses are not to be tolerated. I'm not sure who gains from chaos, but I know it's not the poor folks in the council flats. The politics of vindictiveness is never, ever anything like a solution.

When people lack jobs, opportunity, and ownership of property they have little or no stake in their communities.

Because Katrina put it out there, no one can play the pretend game anymore that there isn't poverty and inequality in this country. The Millions More Movement - Katrina gives it added significance.

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.

If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.

Public action should seek to expand the set of opportunities of those who have the least voice and fewest resources and capabilities.

They do not easily rise whose abilities are repressed by poverty at home.

The economic and technical capabilities of the established societies are sufficiently vast to allow for adjustments and concessions to the underdog.

It might be that my poverty is my fault—the result of my ineptitude or my laziness. However, is there any way that the poverty that my child is condemned to is his fault? He certainly does not have the same opportunity as my child would if I were rich. But where then is our equality of opportunity?

No country now in transition will be able to accommodate demands for either economic security or social justice anytime soon.

A universal voucher program would change the face of poverty in this country.

The poor don't want some small life. They don't want to game the system. They want to contribute, and they want to thrive. But poverty reduces people born for better things.

One in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a wage.