Bob Hawke Quotes

You know who got a Merry Christmas? The richest 1 percent, that’s who. Republicans in Congress made sure of that, protecting billions in taxpayer giveaways. In tough times, Republicans stripped 1.3 million American of jobless benefits when they could not find a job, kicking them to the curb during Christmas…

My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak. What I see in my country, progressively over these years, is that the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer. The rich have become indifferent through a philosophy of greed, and the poorer have become hopeless because they're not properly cared for. That's actually something that is happening in many Western societies. Your own, I am told, is not free from it.

The deficit crisis is real and must be addressed. But it cannot be solved on the backs of the weak and vulnerable.

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

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

The great network of social insurance programs established by President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, President Harry Truman’s Fair Deal, President John F. Kennedy’s Great Society, and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and defended by President Bill Clinton, sharply limits the amount of poverty a downturn [in the economy] can cause.

The burning issue of our time is the growing inequality in income and wealth in our country.

We cannot afford to spend millions and millions over nuclear arms when there is poverty and unemployment all around us.

We in the Congress Party are hoping to do greater efforts to help the people of India, especially the downtrodden who find it very tough to get ahead in life. We are focusing on tackling issues related to unemployment and poverty.

If there are not jobs or adequate forms of social protection, there is not enough income to create the consumption base that drives demand and sustainable economic growth.

There is no peace in poverty

Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.

We are living in the richest country in the history of the world, yet we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country and millions of people are struggling to put food on the table. It is my absolute conviction that everyone in this country deserves a minimum standard of living and we've got to go forward in the fight to make that happen.

I do not share the general view that market forces are the basis for political liberty. Every time I see a homeless person living in a cardboard box in London, I see that person as a victim of market forces. Everytime I see a pensioner who cannot manage, I know that he is a victim of market forces

The curse of poverty has no justification in our age.

Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, FDR, looked south and said I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill clad, ill nourished. Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, I see one third of a nation and it can go to hell.

[President Johnson] had the political will to say that having one in five Americans living in the kind of abject conditions their fellow citizens associated with Third World countries and the novels of Dickens was as dangerous as any battlefield enemy.

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.

You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.

I feel sympathy for the working class lad. I've always championed about ticket prices and try to equate that to people's salaries.

I want a society that provides decent jobs for those who can work and decent security for those can't.

You see, you can't put joblessness in a jail cell.

It's really Democrats who are fighting for working families and small businesses and trying to address the biggest problems that we have, which are huge disparities in incomes and wealth and money influencing the Democratic process.

Let us invest less and less in war and tax cuts for the richest 1 percent, and more and more in jobs and schools for the other 99 percent.

We cannot afford to leave the poor behind.