War On Poverty Quotes

Between 1965 (the beginning of LBJ's "Great Society") and 1994, welfare spending has cost the taxpayers $5.4 trillion in constant 1993 dollars. The War on Poverty has cost us 70 % more than the total price tag for defeating both Germany and Japan in World War II, after adjusting for inflation. Many believe that Welfare has destroyed millions of families and cost a huge portion of our national wealth in the process.

Abolish Poverty

We think there are better solutions to fighting poverty because we see what the War on Poverty has produced. It produced tens of trillions of dollars in spending. It has been a 51-year exercise, and yet the poverty rates in America today are not much better than when we started the War on Poverty.

Since the 1960s, when America finally became fully accountable for its past, deference toward all groups with any claim to past or present victimization became mandatory. The Great Society and the War on Poverty were some of the first truly deferential policies.

The results of the Great Society experiments started coming in and began showing that, for all its good intentions, the War on Poverty was causing irreparable damage to the very communities it was designed to help.

The war on poverty had not been undertaken at the request of the poor.

If we can spend the money to put a man on the moon, we ought to be able to find the funds to put a man on his feet.

… man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

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.

Prohibiting Poverty

We will not rest until this war [on poverty] is won.

I believe the war on poverty is a more American idea than the war on the war on poverty. I believe that most people feel like that. And I believe that it ain't over till it's over.

For too long, we've attached some mythic notion to government solutions, and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds.

I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president.

Through a policy driven approach we have wage a war against poverty and we are confident we will win this war.

We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won

We have gone about as far as good will and even good legislation will take us.

The Vietnam War soured President Johnson's legacy. We still have to recognize his domestic legacy.

One of the most durable successes of the war on poverty was to dramatically reduce the number of elderly poor in America. That's still true today. But, by contrast, child poverty has shot up over the last few years: A decade ago, about 16 percent of children in America were poor - which is a shockingly high percentage. But it's not as shocking as today, when we see that 22 percent of kids live in poverty.

We must win the war on poverty by enlisting the greatest weapon ever invented - free enterprise

For the first time in America's history, poverty is on the run.

Not only does big government get in the way when it provides disincentives to work, it also has a profoundly negative effect on community. […] The more the government does for individuals, the more community is diminished.

The way to reduce pollution in Detroit is to make automobile company executives drive in non-air-conditioned cars during summer rush hours. The way to get business to join the war on poverty is to make corporate executives drive through Harlem every day instead of going home on air-conditioned trains drinking martinis.

Wars are hard to exit. Once a war against poverty, crime, or terrorism is launched. Announcing a unilateral truce is usually political suicide. Presidents get boxed into absolutist policies in which compromise is impossible and victory is the only acceptable outcome.

There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty.