Quotes About Poverty

On the one hand we have got to ask, are there some areas of universal benefits that are no longer affordable? But on the other hand let us look at the issue of dependency where we have trapped people in poverty through the extent of welfare that they have.

If we have an honest discussion on whether the war on poverty should be fought with welfare or with economic growth in the private sector, Democrats will lose black votes.

Originally, I came from Texas, and we lived on - I guess you'd call it welfare, what we called relief.

The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs.

Studies show that people that are on welfare are higher users of drugs than people not on welfare.

Contrary to what President Obama said in his inaugural address, going on Medicare and food stamps does not strengthen us. Just ask people who are fourth-generation welfare recipients.

The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that's the point.

Most of black America is in housing projects, without jobs, living on welfare. And this is not the case in 'The Cosby Show,' because all the values in that household are strictly what I would call white American values.

America doesn't like to hear about things like welfare. 'Don't talk about that. We don't like what it did to people!' Yeah, but it happened.

In '86 or '87, the welfare lists were at the lowest level in 17 years. Why? Because the economy was the best it was in 17 years. There were jobs.

It was such a struggle for me to make it off welfare. I was getting $630 a month for myself and my children with no support from their fathers. The rent was $600 a month, and if you got a job, they took it out of your welfare.

U.K. welfare cuts are pushing more children into poverty; that is beyond dispute.

Ma was legally blind due to a degenerative eye disease she'd had since birth. This meant she was entitled to welfare, and our lives revolved around the first day of every month when her payment was due.

I grew up on the south side of Chicago, most of that time on welfare. My mother and sister and I used to live with my grandparents and various cousins. We shared a two-bedroom tenement, and the three of us slept in one of those bedrooms and had a set of bunk beds.

Poverty is on the increase - due to welfare cuts - and demand for food banks has rocketed.

We need workfare over welfare.

We oppose the benefit cap. We oppose social cleansing. We will bring the welfare bill down by controlling rents and boosting wages, not by impoverishing families and socially cleansing our communities.

We were below welfare. We begged from people on welfare. My father tried to repair our shoes with pieces of bicycle tires.

When you question this war on poverty, you get all the criticisms from adherents to the status quo who just don't want to see anything change. We got to have the courage to face that down, just as we did in the welfare reform of the late 1990s, and if we succeeded, we can help resuscitate this culture and get people back to work.

My mom struggled for a long time growing up poor, and then we were on welfare when I was a kid. So to see her kids, not just me, be successful and making money and happy and healthy and in good relationships - it means so much to her after all that she's been through.

My mom was on welfare for the first five, six years of my life.

Having grown up a trailer park kid on welfare and food stamps, becoming jaded is impossible, although now I make a good living, which I'm not ashamed of; when you've been poor, it never leaves you.

Until I was two, my mother supplemented her welfare payments by cleaning houses and waitressing. My father didn't help.

Every time there was a shiny car, my mum must have worried it was the welfare people coming for her kids. We had no idea.