Nicholas D Kristof > Quotes

“Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. —JOHN EHRLICHMAN, President Richard Nixon’s domestic policy adviser”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“of the 1 percent saw a bit less than a doubling of real incomes. Those in the 90th through 99th percentiles simply stayed even, with incomes growing at the same rate as per capita GDP, or gross domestic product. And the bottom 90 percent lost relative ground, with their incomes since 1980 growing more slowly than per capita GDP. The result is that the top 1 percent now owns twice as great a share of national wealth as the entire bottom 90 percent. We went from being a world leader in opportunity to being a laggard.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. —PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“It’s perhaps telling that the United States for years was, embarrassingly, the only country in the world besides Somalia and South Sudan that had not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That has now changed: the United States is the only nation that hasn’t bothered to ratify it.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“The reason we have a single-payer health-care system for the elderly (Medicare) but not for children is simple: seniors vote, and children don’t. So while American children die at 55 percent higher rates than children in other advanced countries, Americans who make it to age sixty-five and qualify for Medicare then have a remaining life expectancy similar to that of our peer countries.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“The enemy of our country is poverty and hopelessness.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“If we don’t address the root suffering of Americans, even if you took every opioid pill away, that suffering will manifest into another social and public health problem,” he told us. “If we want to end, truly end the opioid crisis, we need to understand the basic causes of suffering and pain in America.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“Without much discussion, we have created a two-tier justice system. If you shoplift at the grocery store, you can be carted off to jail. But if you steal tens of millions of dollars from the tax authorities or fraudulently peddle dangerous drugs from a corporate suite, you’ll be hailed for your business savvy.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“More children die each year in the United States from abuse and neglect than from cancer.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“He calls for a return to social balance through a “morality of grace,” an ethic that relies more on compassion and egalitarianism, less on scolding about personal irresponsibility. The morality of grace arises from the theological concept that everyone can be saved by God’s grace, even the undeserving, the uneducated, the jobless, the addicted and the homeless”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“The result is that the top 1 percent now owns twice as great a share of national wealth as the entire bottom 90 percent. We went from being a world leader in opportunity to being a laggard.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“California’s best public elementary schools are in Palo Alto, accessible to anyone who can buy a house in a district where the median home price exceeds $3 million. Next door in East Palo Alto, which is disproportionately poor and minority, children attend inferior schools that lead to an inferior future”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“He calls for a return to social balance through a “morality of grace,” an ethic that relies more on compassion and egalitarianism, less on scolding about personal irresponsibility. The morality of grace arises from the theological concept that everyone can be saved by God’s grace, even the undeserving, the uneducated, the jobless, the addicted and the homeless.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“America ranks number 41 in child mortality, according to the Social Progress Index, which is based on research by three Nobel Prize–winning economists and covers 146 countries for which there is reliable data. We rank number 46 in internet access, number 44 in access to clean drinking water, number 57 in personal safety and number 30 in high-school enrollment. Somehow, “We’re number 30!” doesn’t seem so proud a boast. Overall, the Social Progress Index ranks the United States number 26 in well-being of citizens, behind all the other members of the G7 as well as significantly poorer countries like Portugal and Slovenia, and America is one of just a handful of countries that have”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“minute to reflect on your life, you realize what you’ve been doing to the people that you love the most,” she said.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“in 1984, the television series Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous made its debut. The writer Michael Tomasky puts it this way: “Americans became a more acquisitive—bluntly, a more selfish—people.” In 1965, the average chief executive earned about twenty times as much as the average worker; now the average CEO earns more than three hundred times as much.”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“It’s perhaps telling that the United States for years was, embarrassingly, the only country in the world besides Somalia and South Sudan that had not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. That has now changed: the United States is the only nation that hasn’t bothered”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“The U.S. is the most dangerous of wealthy, democratic countries in the world for children,” said Dr. Ashish Thakrar of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the lead author of the study. If the United States had simply improved at the same rate as other advanced countries, 600,000 children’s lives would have been saved, Thakrar calculates. If America had the same mortality rates as the average in the rest of the rich world, 21,000 kids’ lives would”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

“Let’s be blunt: America as a nation is guilty of child neglect. We”
― Nicholas D Kristof, Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope