Mike Foster Quotes

I think we've made tremendous progress on racism. We've even made progress on war. We've made almost no progress on poverty.

This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside.

Poor men's words have little weight.

The poor have to labour in the face of the majestic equality of the law, which forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.

An imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.

Why did the world ever become so unequal?

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

Only the poor are forbidden to beg.

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing.

… in the old days there were one thousand castes and destinies in India. These days, there are just two castes: Men with Big Bellies and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat – or get eaten up

Inequality is bad for everyone, not just the middle class and the poor.

Liberals have to get more comfortable with dealing with the poor as they actually are. I admire their refusal to look down on the least among us, but at some level, that can become an excuse to never really look at the problem at all.

Britain is now living with the consequences of allowing an underclass to take root and fester.

Disparity is Australia's worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to 'close the gap.'

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

The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.

In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.

If you have extremes of haves and have-nots where the gap keeps growing, the have-nots group together and create social disorder, as they can't see a way out of their situation.

There are people in whole parts of our cities who are being totally left behind and disregarded. They are unheard. They are told they are unneeded by this economy. And that extreme poverty breeds conditions for extreme violence.

Bolivia is not yet a country of equals.

The pleasures of the mighty are obtained by the tears of the poor.

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.

It's not my fault that there is this gap between rich and poor, it is the fault of governments. I want a different world. One where I don't wake up thinking I'm so lucky to be able to feed my daughter.

There are huge divorces and divides and chasms in black America between the have-gots and the have-nots, between the monied and the poor, between the educated and the non-educated. And there are huge and growing chasms daily. And I want to say that it's not simply about generation. It's about genre.